


abstract

by suntrastar



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (i am not funny), Artist!Reader, F/M, I attempt to be funny, SLOW BURN!!!!, Strangers to Lovers, Ugh what else, alright y'all hop on this train, and he gets some1!, art instructor!reader, binky barnes needs some1, damn bamn fluff and fluff, fluff-fest, hell yeah, not yet doe, steve and reader r besties, steve is the wingman y'all know how these go, ummm smut chapter 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26019742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suntrastar/pseuds/suntrastar
Summary: Wait- Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier himself, is attending your art class? And you didn't even recognize him?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 44
Kudos: 106





	1. ugly watercolor and coffee

**Author's Note:**

> oh jeez louise this is so long. oh well! i enjoyed writing it. might be kinda incoherent kinda all over the place kinda poorly written but i'm doing my best. i am not a professional artist but i paint quite a bit so!! trying my best to write some artsy stuff!! no beta we die like men!! buckle up (BUCKle up haha i'm silly asf) for the ride! i really hope you all like it <3  
> quick little thing: a few spaces is a shorter time skip, the three asterisks (***) are longer time skips!!! now enjoy ;o

“Hey, can you come look at this?”

You teach three classes a week- Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The latter two are enjoyable in their own right, but Mondays are definitely your favorite. Instead of teaching kids, who are funny and creative but so  _ messy, _ and so  _ loud, _ you get to teach _ adults.  _ People your own age or usually older, putting you in a position of authority, valuing your opinion, wanting you to come look at things.

It’s a  _ delightful  _ power trip.

You turn away from the window to see who’s speaking.

It’s Steve. 

_ Of course _ it’s Steve, your  _ star student,  _ staring at you with a worn, weary intensity, wiping a paintbrush on a paper towel. He’s already pushed his sheet of paper across the table, bumpy with water and watercolor paint, cream-colored edges starting to curl. He leans away from it, reclining in a seat that’s adult-sized but dwarfed by his frame, looking so  _ forlorn, _ like the paper just abandoned him, moved to the opposite side of the table by itself.

You stifle a laugh.

“Sure,” you say, and make your way over to his table. 

Steve fidgets in his seat as you look at his painting. You try to keep your jaw in check.

It drops anyway.

As always, it’s  _ beautiful. _ He’s painted a sky, swirling with purples and pinks, and careful clouds, flickering in and out between layers of paint, elegant and pale yellow-orange. And the _ sun- _ it’s off-center, and you’re sure it was unintentional, but that adds to the effect, because it’s  _ hot red,  _ and dazzling, and slowly seeping into the still-wet sky. Tendrils of red like real sunbeams, pushing through the clouds like a real sunset.

You don’t know why Steve even takes this class. Half the time, you feel like  _ he  _ should be the one teaching.

“It’s _ gorgeous,” _ you say eventually, once your words come back to you. “I  _ love  _ how you painted the sun- the _ red,  _ oh my god. You’re seriously a natural.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, and you push the paper back towards him. He looks down at it, still tense, brow furrowed, and you almost laugh again, until he looks back up at you. “I wanted to know what you thought about it.”

_ Power trip. _

“I  _ love  _ it,” you say, giving him a reassuring smile, which he hesitantly returns. You might be laying it on a little thick, but Steve still looks distressed, and you genuinely like the guy enough to try to help him.

When he walked in with his friend for the first class, you were floored. People like Steve don’t attend classes like this- classes like this are attended by regular people. Not people that walk like dancers, all grace and light steps, not people that are _extraordinarily_ jacked, with jutting shoulders and rippling muscles, not people that have a weirdly authoritarian air around them, like a politician, but less shrewd.

Still, you welcomed them and made awkward small-talk and tried not to stare at their arms and hoped you came across as a somewhat decent person. It’s your first time teaching adults, you explained, and Steve gave you a smile so sincere and reassured you that you would do _ great, _ boosting your confidence to the point where you actually did.

Steve is _lovely._ He’s passionate about art and has a good eye, a better eye than you, really, and he always tries so hard with whatever he does, and he’s funny in a dorky way, and completely unaware of it. He always wears a baseball hat and tucks his shirts into his pants and called you ma’am once, and looked so surprised when you bursted out laughing and told him to call you by your first name. With him, two classes have flown by, and now, during the third, he’s warmed up to you enough to talk to you like a friend.

The friend he brings with him, though?

A total  _ douchebag.  _

The night to Steve’s day, the rain to his sunshine. It’s obvious that Steve brings him along as some sort of moral support, to make himself look less out of place, which is fine, except the guy always treats you like you’ve perpetually offended him. 

And maybe you have, maybe one time you did something that’s worthy of his eternal dislike, but you wouldn’t know what it is, because he’s never brough it up, because he  _ barely fucking talks.  _

You don’t think he’s a naturally quiet guy. He definitely  _ looks  _ like he has a lot to say, but no matter what, he only ever talks in single-syllable bursts, quiet enough that half the time you miss what he’s saying.

He doesn’t ignore you, either- he listens to everything you say and lets his judgement flicker over his face- which is  _ way  _ worse. A glare is a slight misstep, a shake of his head means that you’ve just said something that he finds stupid, a scowl is a _ catastrophe.  _

You don’t even know his  _ name.  _ He’s never introduced himself, and always writes his name in a shaky, illegible scrawl on the sign-in sheet, and by now you don’t care enough to look it up.

Still, you’re nice to him, polite. It’s okay if he doesn’t like you. You don’t need to be liked- being noticed is enough.

You shift away from Steve to his friend, sitting next to him at the table. He’s staring at you in a way that you can only describe as violent, and you flinch, and then plaster your smile back on.

“How’s it going?” You ask, expecting no response, stealing a glance at his paper. He’s painted the entire sheet a watered-down blue, and you want to congratulate him, for actually participating this time, but you don’t say anything. “The watercolors working out for you?”

Your heart goes out to the poor paintbrush in his hand. It’s barely been used, is steadily dripping water, and is being  _ throttled  _ in his gloved grip. He always wears one glove- it’s weird, but you’re not going to pry.

He catches you looking and a whole myriad of emotion plays over his face; irritation and shame, a creased brow and a scowl. You have the feeling that you’ve taken a massive overstep, even though you haven’t said anything else, even though you’re not looking at his hand anymore, just at him. 

His hair hangs over his eyes, glossy and carelessly wavy, which you would find pretty, maybe, if he wasn’t looking at you the way he is. Like you’ve just done something terrible.

“Sure,” he says, and that’s it. 

Even when you turn away, he’s glaring.

You hate it, so you pretend it’s not happening.

Steve gives you a sympathetic glance before you head back. You wave it off.

“Shonna,” you call, to the fiftysomething woman hunched over her painting a few tables down, “how’re the flowers looking?”

***

Thirty minutes before your fourth Monday class starts, you arrive at the studio to find Rina washing paintbrushes in the sink.

“Hey,” you call.

She turns to you and gives you a surprised grin. “Oh, hey! You’re here early- come help with these brushes.”

You set your bag on the counter by the wall and join her at the sink. You’ve known Rina for ages- ever since you were roommates in college. The class before yours is taught before, some advanced painting thing that she is extremely  _ overqualified  _ to teach.

She’s kind of famous. And kind of self-absorbed, and a little bit pretentious, but maybe that’s just what happens when you’re as successful in your field as she is. No matter what it is, you can’t complain- she’s the one that helped get you this job in the first place.

“A couple of people in my class like to get here early, so I just try to arrive before them,” you say. She passes you a clean paintbrush. You reach around her and tear off a paper towel from the dispenser. “Did you dye your hair? It looks  _ so  _ pretty.”

“Yes!” She shakes her head, letting her hair sway. Last time you met her, she had dyed it pink. Now it’s mahogany red, straight and sleek and falling just past her shoulders. She looks a little unreal. “How’s your class going? Are the people okay?”

“Yeah, most of them are pretty nice.”

She passes you another paintbrush to dry. You consider bringing up Steve’s friend, but decide against it.

“That’s good- and you’re welcome, by the way. But okay, listen. Do you remember that one guy I told you about a while back, Dustin? So yesterday I was just sitting at home, and then he  _ texted  _ me…”

With the formalities out of the way, she launches into a story about someone you definitely _ don’t _ remember. Still, you humor her, listen to what she has to say, chime in at the right parts and say  _ “really?”  _ and  _ “no way!”  _ too many times. The minutes tick by.

When all of the brushes are washed and dried, you take them, since you’re going to be the one using them next, and start setting up for the class. Rina walks away and grabs her stuff from the counter. She lingers by the doorway, door already propped open, aimlessly scrolling through something on her phone, hesitant to leave for a reason you don’t know. Maybe she has more to say- if that’s even, like, possible.

You set the brushes in a container at the center table, and head over to the shelves on the far wall to pull out more supplies. Unfortunately, today’s class is revolving around watercolor again. It’s drudgery, such a  _ boring  _ medium- dull, unsaturated,  _ painstaking  _ when it comes to detail. You bring out a stack of paper, the least-depressing palettes, and then mason jars for holding water.

You’re setting the last jar on the table when Rina shrieks.

It startles you, making your hand slip. 

The jar wobbles over the edge of the table and then falls, shattering into cloudy glass pieces at your feet.

“Shit,” you curse, and look over at her. “Rina, what the  _ hell?” _

Standing across from her in the doorway, having arrived early for class as usual, are Steve and his friends, two shades more flustered than usual. Rina is  _ gawking  _ at them.

Okay, they’re attractive, but not  _ that  _ attractive. 

Not  _ shriek-worthy _ attractive. 

You sigh loudly and carefully step over the glass, making your way over to them. “Hi, Steve,” you say, and he jolts, like a scared cat. He’s blushing, stepping back into the hallway, hands awkwardly dangling at his sides. His friend is staring at Rina like he’s about to murder her, and you’re staring at him like you’re about to ask him to pass you the broom behind the door.

Because you are. 

“Sorry about… _ that.  _ There’s a broom behind the door, could you pass it to me?”

He opens his mouth to say something, and you are  _ desperate  _ to hear him, even if he’s only going to utter a simple  _ yes, _ but Rina buts in.

“You _ did not _ just ask the  _ Winter Soldier  _ to pass you a broom.”

_ Who? _

“Girl,  _ what?” _

All three of you turn to her, cornering back into the wall. She looks even more unreal, eyes blown wide, red creeping up her neck, giving her hair a run for its money, still gawking. You resist the urge to reach out and pull her chin back up, to close her mouth.

She alternates between looking at Steve and at… 

“That’s the Winter Soldier,” she says slowly, like she’s trying to convince herself, or you, and then steps closer to Steve, who instinctively takes a step back. He’s fully in the hallway, now. “And _ you’re _ Captain America.”

Steve’s jaw clenches. He stays silent, and you feel bad for him, that’s all you can feel, really- you are confused beyond reason, halfway convinced that Rina is _ losing her shit, _ still awaiting the broom, still awaiting Steve’s friend’s words, racking your brain for any image of Captain America or the Winter Soldier that you might have- and coming up completely empty.

You don’t watch the news, like, _ ever. _

Little details float back to you. Steve’s dressing sense, his manners, his  _ muscles… _

The _ baseball caps _ that both of them are always wearing...

His friend’s  _ glove… _

Oh, fuck.

“Are you?” You ask dumbly. The question is meant for both of them, but you only look at one of them while speaking. A glare meets you back- a slight misstep.

You can’t even  _ see  _ your feet, in this situation. You’re walking blind. 

Steve crosses his arms and looks at you sternly. He doesn’t look angry, but as close as he can get. “Yes,” he says, completely guarded and unfriendly and not lovely at all. “I thought you knew that.”

You are  _ so  _ stupid- how did you not know that?

“I didn’t,” you say, and you don’t sound convincing at all. Not much fazes you, but you are absolutely, positively fazed right now, and starting to spiral out. “I had  _ no  _ idea- I thought you guys could have been, like,  _ bodyguards, _ or something, not actual  _ Avengers,  _ oh my god. I’m so sorry, shit, _ thank you for your service?” _

You’re going to end it all- this is so embarrassing.

Steve’s mouth twitches. Rina is scarlet-faced. The _ Winter Soldier, _ god, looks so  _ tense,  _ like he might shatter, too, into silent, grumpy pieces all over the floor.

“You’re welcome,” Steve says, and marginally relaxes. He stays in the hallway, the Winter Soldier by the door- you should have paid more attention in your tenth grade history class,  _ what  _ is the guy’s _ name? _

Rina peels herself off the wall, and you start to get nervous. There’s a painful silence, with lots of staring, where you’re still trying to coax a few rational thoughts out of your brain, and only coming up with one- Rina needs to  _ leave. _

You try to tell her that with your eyes, with a pointed look, but you’re not great at this whole communication-through-expressions thing, so she doesn’t get the hint, or does and just ignores it.

“So, let me get this straight,” she says, tearing the silence like a plastic seal, voice starting to rise, from wonder to excitement, from painless curiosity to  _ danger, _ “there’s two  _ Avengers  _ taking your class? And you didn’t even  _ recognize  _ them?”

“Nope,” you say, looking away, at a stain on the wall, at the distant glass shards still unswept away on the floor.

“That’s…” 

She trails off before she has the chance to call you stupid, because the Winter Soldier gives her a pointed look of his own. Low brows and dark eyelashes, blazing blue eyes- she has no choice but to listen. Your staring was irritating, but his is  _ intimidating. _

She scampers away, mumbling something you can’t catch and brushing against Steve as she leaves.

This whole thing is so _ unprofessional, _ but at least you can breathe again-

“Here,” the Winter Soldier says, and a broom handle comes into your view.

Just one word, but you’ll take it with open arms. You take the broom from him, give an unreturned, unfamiliarly sheepish smile and head back to the broken glass on the floor. 

  
  
  


The broken glass is swept up and tossed in the trash. You avoid looking at the doorway, focusing on other useless tasks instead. Rearranging the supplies on the table, fiddling with the window blinds, chatting with the rest of the class attendees as they start to file in.

Then the class starts and you’re swept back into your demonstration, talking and teaching and showing off different techniques that can be done with different types of brushes. You only look in their direction once, right after showing off some technique you barely remember from art school with a fan brush- they sit at their table near the back, Steve paying attention as usual, his friend silently reacting, as usual.

So they decided to stay- that’s good. _ Great,  _ even. 

Until the next part of the class starts, when everyone gets to work on their own paintings, when you have to stop talking. 

You mill around the room, searching for a conversation to join in on or a comment to make, but find none. Then you take a sheet of paper and hopelessly try to draw- search for a distraction and a spark up of an idea, something, anything, and come up completely empty. It’s just...

How famous are they? Like, A-list celebrity famous? Are they offended that you didn’t recognize them- should you start treating them differently? You don’t keep up with this stuff. You have an  _ impossibly  _ long list of other things to worry about- you don’t have the  _ time  _ to worry about this stuff. The Avengers aren’t something you think about _ ever, _ because why should you?

If you opened any newspaper or magazine you would find something about them- a charity gala they attended, some recent threat they neutralized, the latest gossip surrounding their personal lives. But those lives are so far detached from your own that you’ve never bothered to look.

You simply  _ don’t care.  _ You’re not a native New Yorker- it’s not like these people are your hometown heroes, that you grew up idolizing them. They save the world time and time again and society is forever indebted to them and all of that, but what are  _ you  _ supposed to do about it?

And most importantly, what is the Winter Soldier’s fucking  _ name? _

Enough of this chaos goes on in your mind to make your head hurt. _ Fuck it, _ you decide- you’ll face it. You straighten your shoulders as you stand, trying your best to look purposeful as you walk to their table, like you have reason to go over there. Yeah, they’re strong. Genetically enhanced and all of that, and they’re important: they’re  _ Avengers.  _

But they’re taking  _ your  _ class.

You slide into the chair across from the Soldier without taking the time to gauge their reactions.

“Do other people here know?” You ask.

Steve startles, eyes widening, and then considers the question while swirling his brush in green paint. He’s working on a landscape today, you think. “Shonna might,” he says, not rudely. “But nobody else.”

So maybe not  _ that  _ famous. Or maybe the people here are just like you and don’t care.

But it still doesn’t make sense. “Then why did you think that  _ I  _ knew?”

“Because you talk a lot,” Steve says, like it’s the most obvious thing ever.

“Well, yeah, that’s part of the job-”

Steve cuts you off, and fuck, you  _ hate  _ getting interrupted. But he’s smiling, and you can’t bring yourself to get upset over it. “You talk a lot to _ us.” _

_ Us? _

More like to  _ him.  _

You take it in stride, don’t let your confidence slip. You’ve purposely angled your head away, and you know the Winter Soldier is staring at you- you can feel it on your cheek, on your shoulder, on every nerve in your face. You don’t look back at him. This revelation hasn’t made him any less unpleasant. 

“Yeah,” you say, like it’s just as obvious, “because you’re a nice guy,  _ Steve.” _

Steve raises his eyebrows so high that they disappear under the brim of his hat. You smile at him as nicely as you can, sugar-sweet, until he can’t take anymore and drops his gaze back to his painting. You turn back to the nameless man across from you.

_ Winter Soldier.  _

“Hi,” you say, only to him, and prop your elbows up on the table, resting your face in your hands. “I  _ love  _ the little pattern you have going on with your painting.” 

It’s random splotches of black paint- calling it a pattern is an exaggeration. But you carry on.

“This is probably a bad time to ask, and it’s kind of a dumb question, but, like, what’s your name?”

He just barely raises an eyebrow, allowing for a fraction of surprise, before schooling his expression back into his usual mix of anger and boredom, a casual glare and slight frown. For a moment, you wonder what he looks like when he’s happy.

“You don’t know his _ name?”  _ Steve is in disbelief, and then he winces, and you think he’s been kicked under the table. Abruptly, you laugh.

It rings out. A few people turn and stare, but you brush it all off with another smile.

_ He’s _ still staring. You don’t mind it.

The paintbrush in his hand is suddenly unsteady.

“My name is Bucky,” he says, slowly and loudly enough for you to make out the sound of his voice, for the first time ever.

He is  _ definitely  _ bothered by you asking, his mouth drawn tight, and you can’t even take the time to appreciate how cutesy his name is compared to his demeanor, because oh  _ hell.  _ It’s going to be  _ difficult  _ to keep up this whole dislike thing, if his voice sounds like  _ this,  _ low and rough and gritty like sandpaper, pleasantly grating over you and your skin…

You have to consciously remind yourself to keep on smiling.

“Nice to meet you, Bucky.” 

  
  
  


Things should feel different, but they don’t. Nobody really reacts- everything resumes as normal. Steve focuses on his panting, adding delicate brushstrokes to the branches of a tree. You linger for a moment, and then get up from the table and flutter off to someone else. 

For every class, you wear this kitschy apron, paint-stained, with strings tied in a hasty bow against your back that Bucky always  _ aches  _ to even out. Someone tells you something, and you respond eagerly, fully phased out of the past incident.

He stares until he realizes he’s staring, and then drops his eyes back down to his paper.

Steve wanted to attend this class for a number of reasons- he was bored and wanted something to occupy his time, he wanted to revisit an old hobby, he wanted to learn from  _ you- _ some hip, emerging artist he’s a fan of, whose work he’s been following for a while now, who is  _ seriously  _ talented, although you have yet to prove it. He wanted to go do something separated from the events of his regular life.

So much wanting. Bucky wants to know why you’re so  _ indifferent. _

He doesn’t know if it’s a good thing that you didn’t know his name, or that you didn’t flinch or gasp or accuse him of something, or pointedly look at his left arm. Should he be thankful? Steve is clearly thankful, already loosening up, freed of any lasting tension.

Bucky just feels wary. You’re unsettling.

You come back over to their table one more time. The sleeves of your shirt are pushed up, and there’s a smear of something dark on your forearm, ink or paint. On one wrist you’re wearing a bracelet made of braided leather. On the other you wear a bulky digital watch. 

Practical.

“Everything okay?” You ask, as if something  _ not okay  _ could potentially have happened, in your forty-five minute absence. 

Steve fixes you with a friendly smile. Bucky can’t ever bring himself to do the same.

“Yep,” Steve says, and you nod your head, clearly relieved. 

“Great!” You glance at him for a spare second, and turn away again. 

Everyone he knows is so  _ guarded,  _ walls built high and doors barred shut. Except for you, if Bucky can say that he knows you, the perky art instructor, Steve’s favorite artist. You’re confident and flippant, and that should be a bad pairing, but somehow you can carry yourself within it just fine. Always purposeful in the space you occupy, not reacting to the knowledge of his and Steve’s major,  _ momentous  _ identities.

Bucky wonders, idly, as he blots water over what you so generously called a pattern, why you didn’t.

It’s not like he  _ wants  _ you to acknowledge it, wants you to call him a war criminal or a Rusisan spy. He just wants you to-

He doesn’t know.

The class goes on. An older couple sitting a few tables away have caught your attention, chattering on and on about their personal lives.They have a pet cat that their landlord doesn’t know about, and when they retire they want to move to the seaside in Italy, and in May their son is going to graduate high school.

_ “High school?” _ You gasp, loud for no reason. “I  _ hated  _ high school.”

Before the class ends, you take your position at the front of the studio, and talk some more. He knows it’s part of your job, but you are excessive.

There’s an art exhibition going on at some museum, and one of the featured artists is an acquaintance of yours, and on Saturday the admission fee is discounted, and if anybody is interested, you have a stack of flyers on the center table. And you hope that everyone has a good week.

You look at Bucky while finishing up your little monologue, giving a half-smile that’s for the whole class, but seemingly only directed at him. He blinks slowly, and when he opens his eyes again, you’re looking somewhere else.

***

“Morning, pal, you ready to go?”

Steve gives him a hopeful smile as he peels an orange. 

Bucky’s hair is still wet from his shower, dripping water onto his shirt. It’s early, too early to go  _ anywhere. _ He doesn’t even know why he’s  _ awake-  _ usually after his wake-of-dawn runs, he falls back asleep, or lies down and just stares at his ceiling, thinking, until he grows restless enough to get up and do something. But today, the restlessness came much sooner, so he got up much sooner, and it might already be a mistake.

He takes a seat at the kitchen island, next to Sam, trying to think of something that Steve might have had planned for today, and coming up completely empty. “Go where?”

Steve looks hurt, for a brief second. “The exhibition at the museum, remember?”

Oh.

_ That. _

“I’m not going to that,” Bucky says, harshly enough for it to be dropped.

Steve does  _ not  _ drop it. “Hey, come on. Just look at it.”

From his back pocket, Steve pulls out a flyer, one of the flyers  _ you  _ had out on Monday, folded up in a neat square- when did Steve pick one of those up? He holds it out, and Bucky, wishing he was asleep again, takes it.

He unfolds it, and the words are written in tiny letters, and the few photos on the paper are in color but too grainy to make out, and it gives him a slight headache, but he pretends to look it over. Sam leans into him to see it, loudly crunching cereal in Bucky’s ear.

“Looks cool, Rogers,” Sam says, and Steve grins, and now  _ Bucky  _ is the bad guy in the situation, for not wanting to go, even though  _ Sam  _ isn’t going either.

Bucky passes the flyer back without reading a single word.

“I’m not going,” he says, again.

But Steve is _ relentless. _ He sets the orange peels aside and gives him a look, and Bucky can already feel his resolve starting to crumble, and it’s kind of pathetic, really. Does he not understand that Bucky is already doing as much as he can?

“Why not?”

He picks the easiest answer. 

“I don’t want to.”

Steve’s brow furrows as he splits the orange into two, giving half to Bucky. Sam slurps the milk from his cereal bowl.

They’re all  _ blissfully  _ silent.

“Come  _ on, _ Bucky,” Steve says suddenly, almost begging. “I  _ really  _ want to see it.”

“I don’t-” He falters, he’s losing the battle. “How many people are there gonna be?”

Steve lights up. Bucky tries to stay indignant, tries to keep his face twisted in dislike, but it’s difficult with Steve. He’s always so full of  _ optimism, _ has so much of it that it spills out through the seams, rubs off onto whoever’s closest. 

“Not that many,” Steve says, like a promise, shaking his head. “That’s why we should go now.”

“Will she be there?”

Sam perks up.

Steve frowns. “No? Or wait, maybe. It’s a public place- I don’t know. She could be.”

It’s miles off from the answer he wants, but again, for Steve, he’ll take it. Bucky ignores Sam leaning across the counter like an idiot and asking _ “who’s she?” _ and eats his orange slices in silence.

***

Huge, bulbous heads, and beady little eyes. The limbs are long and wavy and contorted in the weirdest positions, seas of arms and legs and joints, women twisted over each other in gnarled embraces, a man with his arms twirling over and over again around his own torso. And the  _ colors- _ a complete eclectic mess of everything- blue, red, yellow, green, purple.  _ Everything. _

You walk through the museum floor one, two, three times. The paintings on display are unsettling and  _ ugly,  _ and you’re on the verge of tears.

They’re gorgeous. Pain thrown on a canvas, told through canvas. It’s overwhelming-  _ you’re  _ overwhelmed, and you can’t do anything else about it. The museum just opened and there’s barely any people around- you can wallow in your sadness as much as you want to, for now.

Or maybe you’ll wallow in your _ frustration,  _ instead. 

This… you want to create like _ this. _

But you don’t have  _ it. _

_ It  _ being an impossible, nearly unattainable type of pain, or misery or anger or any other emotion so strong and visceral that you could translate it into something like this, something that evokes something else from other people. From an audience.

You might have had something like that once, but that’s all too far behind you now. Forgettable. What you need right now is an idea, a spark of inspiration, a single coherent thought. A confirmation that you aren’t completely lost.

You wander back to a painting in a far corner, all alone in a small alcove. A red woman, with her head nestled in green grass and legs wrapping around the sun, quite literally head over heels for it. Her mouth is wide open, gaping, calling, wailing, maybe. She has a hooked nose and a mole on one of her arms, and her white dress has fallen down to pool on the grass, and her legs are lithe and unshaven, prickly like the grass, just like the yellow spikes of the sun, drawn almost comically.

How do you even- how do you even come up with things like this?

By living an  _ interesting  _ life, probably. Through not being boring.

You stay there for a while. Long enough that more people start to file in, pretentious art students wearing all black, eccentric people with awesome haircuts, tourists. They peer over your shoulders, awkwardly, waiting for you to move. When you don’t, they leave you to be, giving you a rude look or two that you pay no mind to. There’s space on either side of you, if they’re so  _ desperate  _ to see. Sidling up right against you is kind of weird, but you’ll excuse it, for this painting.

Eventually, you realize that you should probably get going.

You’ve been standing so long that your legs are starting to ache, and there’s countless other Saturday errands you have to run- doing your laundry, buying groceries, calling up your mom- boring Saturday things to do.

You leave the red woman, regrettably. The fabric of your sleeve comes back dry when you wipe your eyes, even though you feel fully washed away, feel like you’re floating as you drift over to the elevator.

The doors slide open and a few people file out, and then it’s empty, thankfully. You step inside, press the button for the ground floor, wait for the doors to fully close-

“Wait,” a voice calls.

You’re not rude- you press the button to hold open the door.

When it fully opens, Steve steps inside, followed by Bucky. 

You’re still out of it. You don’t even  _ realize  _ who they are, not until the doors have slid shut and the floor jolts as the elevator starts its descent and they’ve been staring at you for a solid five seconds.

“Oh, hi,” you say, after too much silence. You need to get yourself together. “You guys came!”

Put a little pep in your step! And more joy in your voice- nobody wants to listen to someone so drained.

Steve shrugs. “I wanted to see it.”

Bucky just smolders, clearly saying with his silence, _ “I didn’t.” _ _  
_

“Did you like it?”

Steve considers your question. The elevator stops at another floor and the doors slide open, but there’s nobody waiting to step inside. You wait for Steve to gather his words together, sure that he’s trying to come up with a nice way to voice whatever he’s thinking, which is definitely not nice. There’s no way that he liked the art, not one chance.

“It was… intriguing,” he says, at last. Neither of them are wearing hats today, because the museum doesn’t allow it. Even in this artificial light, his hair shines, golden-blond. “Did  _ you  _ like it?”

“Yes,” you say, without wasting a second. “The one of the red woman- it’s probably the best thing I’ve seen all _ year.” _

“It’s only January,” Bucky grumbles.

His voice shocks you, sends an ice-cold jolt up your spine that you  _ definitely  _ dislike. 

Steve turns to him, peering over your shoulder, surprised and disappointed. The two of them have a silent conversation with their eyes and you stand in the midst of it, waiting for the goosebumps to settle back down, waiting for the chill to go away. 

It’s difficult- he clearly doesn’t like you, either- and even if he has his own troubling little backstory, which you don’t care enough about to google, it’s not justified. 

But…

It almost makes his aggression...  _ amusing. _

“It  _ is  _ January,” you say politely, dismissing him. “Great observation.”

The elevator reaches the ground floor and the doors side open. You exit in step with Steve, with Bucky right on your heels.

You all stand around in the museum lobby, a wide hallway down from the giftshop and a small cafe.

“Are you headed out?” Steve asks. He puts his hands in his pockets, feet planted wide. 

Bucky crosses his arms. He’s wearing all black. If it were anyone else, you would make a joke- he could almost pass off as a pretentious art student, if the outlines of his body weren’t so visible through his clothes, all taut muscle and sharp angles. His hair curls over his shoulders, prettier than anything you’ve seen on any girl.

_ These guys are Avengers, _ you think, and proceed to push the thought away.

They look so… un-Avenger-y.

“Um.” You press a hand against your forehead, trying to formulate a response. Chores suddenly seem  _ miles  _ away, the last thing you should be doing. You have all of Sunday to complete them, anyway.

“I was going to get something to eat from the cafe first,” you say, nodding over in its direction. “You guys wanna join me?”

You don't know why you look at Bucky when you say it

“Sure!” Steve says, all cheery, still standing alongside you. He smiles and his teeth are pearly white.

_ Of course  _ his teeth are pearly white. Dentists everywhere are probably cowering, clutching their little metal instruments for dear life.

Then he hesitates, and turns to Bucky. “If you have nothing else to do, I mean.”

Bucky pauses. You and Steve both stare him down.

“They have these raspberry-almond muffins that are to die for,” you say, like it’ll convince him.

He rolls his eyes. Bored and still gorgeous- if only.

“I’m free,” he says, and you don’t know why he looks at you when he says it. 

  
  
  


You pay the bored teenager working the cash register with cash. He gives you your change, and when he turns away to prepare your order, you shove half of the bills and all of your coins into the tip jar.

Bucky sits at the farthest table with Steve. His knees can barely fit underneath it, and the tabletop is sticky, and he’s now willingly spending more time here, and with no disguise there is no way that he  _ isn’t _ going to be recognized by someone, and he doesn’t know why he hasn’t fully booked it yet.

Because… 

He doesn’t know. 

Maybe because you’re not asking for anything from him, aren’t minding that he’s sullen or unapproachable or anything else- his presence seems to be enough for you, which is bothersome, and at the same time,  _ mildly  _ exciting.

“Are you having fun?” Steve asks, while you smile at the teenager handing you plates of muffins, little glasses of some milky-espresso-coffee drink.    
“What do you think?” Bucky asks, while you start your journey back to the table, and Steve opens his mouth to respond, already bothered, and Bucky’s already guilty, but then Steve hops up to help you carry everything back. 

You sit down laughing. Steve is laughing, too. The corners of your eyes crease and he can see all of your teeth, and you look at him for a split second, and then turn away before he can get a read on your expression.

He sits in silence, while you and Steve trade jokes and stories and easy banter, talking about art and local politics and all types of things he can’t bring himself to care about, things that Steve is  _ relishing  _ in. You’re witty, apparently, or at least quick enough to get a few quick laughs out of Steve, and Bucky would never say it, he’s barely thinking it, but he  _ appreciates  _ you for it.

And the muffin isn’t quite  _ to die for,  _ but it’s okay. 

During a lull in the conversation, you break your attention away from Steve and turn back to Bucky. You look concerned, almost, still smiling but without showing all of your teeth, leaning towards him like you’re about to tell him a secret.

“I never apologized for before,” you say, and Bucky immediately sits up on edge.

Even Steve goes wary, eyes narrowing.

You suddenly give a long, weary sigh, and press a hand against the back of your neck, like whatever you’re about to say is going to be so tedious. “For my friend flipping out when she saw you guys- she’s literally  _ crazy,  _ she’s always doing too much- but on her behalf, I’m sorry.”

The silence following afterwards is deafening. 

“It’s okay,” Steve says, after a long moment, while you’re still looking at Bucky- your eyes make his skin itch, and he doesn’t say anything else. “She’s not the worst that we’ve gotten.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, great,” you say, and you slump back in your seat, looking away, back to your half-eaten muffin. You pick off an almond from the top and eat it. “Glad we got that out of the way. I just thought it would be weird if I didn’t say anything.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, so polite, even though you’ve done nothing to deserve his thanks. “Have you known her for a long time?”

“Yes, oh my god,” you say, and readjust yourself in your chair again, accidentally bumping your knee against Bucky’s, but not apologizing for it. He glances underneath the table, at your entire bare knee, visible through a rip in your jeans. “Rina- her name is Rina- was my college roommate for a while.”

“You went to college?” Steve asks.

“I have an art degree,” you say dryly, “which was… an okay decision, I guess. Sometimes I think I should have just dropped out and done, like, stand-up or something.”

You clearly don’t want to discuss it, leaving the last part as some sort of rhetorical joke. Steve takes the hint and nods, already closing the chapter, and you take a sip from your little glass, finally silent. The foam on the top of the drink sticks to your mouth until you lick it off. Bucky replies to it anyway.

“Why stand-up?”

You turn to him so fast that he almost misses you faltering, and give him a dazzling smile. He thinks of your bare knee under the table, and tries not to sweat. “Because I’m _ funny, _ Bucky.”

He doesn’t like how his name sounds when you say it. “Tell me a joke.”

“Oh, okay,” you say, and clasp your hands together. Steve is watching, rapt at attention. “Let me think real quick- oh, I have one. Which beverage has a black belt in karate?”

Bucky waits. 

You wait, expecting something from him.

It’s Steve that has to say, “I don’t know, which beverage?”

“Fruit  _ punch,” _ you say, exaggerating the last part, and Bucky just keeps on waiting.

Steve cracks a small smile.

“Let me tell you another,” you say. “What type of phone does a piece of fruit carry?”

Steve takes a few wild guesses. He’s enjoying this, and you are too, both of you feeding off of each other. “A phone-fruit. A fruit-phone. A frone?”

You shake your head. “A  _ blackberry.” _

Bucky doesn’t tell you that he has no idea what you’re talking about. 

“Tough crowd,” you say, when he doesn’t react. “Don’t worry, I have more. Where do you go on red and stop on green?”

“Where?’ Steve asks, waiting, leaning forward in anticipation.

“When you’re eating a watermelon!”

It is not funny, it’s painfully unfunny, and maybe that’s why you and Steve burst out laughing. Bucky steals a glance at your watch, since he doesn’t wear one of his own. It’s nearing noon- how has so much time passed? Why is he still even here when he doesn’t even  _ like  _ you?

“Why are all of them about fruit?” 

You look at him like his question is the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard. “What food is the best listener?”

Bucky just sits. All the foam in his little espresso thing has dissolved, having been left untouched. He doesn’t like the taste of coffee- too bitter, and caffeine doesn’t work on him, anyway. Maybe he should drink it, because you paid for it, and because you  _ didn’t  _ make a comment about old-fashioned manners or chivalry when Steve offered to at first, just shrugged and got in line.

He knows that you won’t care. 

The drink sits on its own, glass beading with condensation.

“Corn is the best listener,” you say, without waiting for Steve to throw his questions or guesses at you, without waiting for Bucky to spit out another sentence. “Because it’s _ all ears.” _

“That wasn’t funny,” he says, and glares at the spot beside your head.

You nod sympathetically, and he thinks of the rips in your jeans. “I know. But it was about a  _ vegetable.” _

_ Oh.  _

You stare at him straight-faced, crossing your arms over your chest. Steve does the same, and  _ then  _ he realizes- the two of you are a bunch of kids, punks,  _ juveniles- _ mocking his stature, pretending to be serious, somehow not offending him.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky says. “you’re…”

He can’t even help it. He looks back at you and his face works on its own. He gives a single, dry chuckle, but he’s smiling, and dragging his hand over his face, scrubbing it off just as fast, but you still see it, and smile back and gently nudge his knee again underneath the table, and then turn back away again, and he’s still staring at your hair while you take big bite out of your to-die-for raspberry-almond muffin, already back in conversation with Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright alright alright!!!! wow!!! you made it all the way here!!! congrats!! ily more than words can write thank u so much lovely reader <3  
> little thing: i made up some random oc as reader's friend bc i feel like a lot of reader inserts don't give the reader very much depth or even just a non-romantic life in general... so it was my attempt to flesh her out! idk! maybe! idk. disregard this.  
> hopefully i can update this once a week!!!! next chapter buncky and reader become friends... start 2 flirt maybe... and we get more insights into reader's career!! thank you all so much for reading! PLEASE comment and leave kudos and bookmark and all of that. i'm hungry. for validation. no but jk i would love to hear your thoughts! rambles! reviews and feedback! please please please comment, it keeps me motivated!!!


	2. flowers and acrylics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a few classes... bucky and reader talk some more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god. 7500 words exactly who the hell do i think i am. take my keyboard rights away i beg you. but whatever! i had this thing sitting in a word doc for like 6 days straight and just ... never posted it ... cancelling myself for that one. throwing myself over the bridge ... i really am deplorable. but now it's here, so enjoy!  
> also, i'm on tumblr!! same username as on here. suntrastar. check me out! i'll follow y'all back. we can chat. have fun. if i ever understand how the hell the format works, i'll post this fic on there, too!!

A blank canvas stands before you, as big as your torso and propped up on an easel. White, unmarked,  _ clean-  _ pristine and teeming with potential.

You hate it.

In your lap sits your sketchbook. Pages upon pages of rough, half-baked ideas, each more mediocre than the last. You thought that maybe you could churn something decent out if you came to your studio, soaked in enough of the atmosphere to coax out some sort of productivity. 

Well, you were _ wrong.  _ It’s the opposite- the empty canvas is slowing your thoughts down, muddling them together, disorienting you.

You stare at it for the better part of an hour, white searing into your vision, shoulders sagging with each passing minute.

There’s something there. You have  _ something, _ a rough chunk of an idea in the back of your mind that could be great, but you can’t figure out what it is. And it’s not something you can just google- you can’t search up how to think a thought you haven’t had yet- so you sit on your own, unproductivity festering, oozing out like the orange from the skylights.

You’re not doing too well. The sun sets before it’s five, it’s Monday, you have a fifth adult class to teach, yesterday you only got to a third of your chores. It  _ sucks- _ you should be better than this! Put-together, neat, confident, creative, actually able to do something. 

You wallow freely, feeling no satisfaction when you reach forward and push the side of the canvas with one finger, tipping it off the easel and sending it clattering to the floor. 

The warmth of the sun burns into your back. You don’t like wasting time like this, never have. Maybe you needed to, though, to help get you back on track.

You heave out a sigh and crack too many joints as you stand up, folding up your easel, picking up the dreaded canvas, shoving your sketchbook into your purse. The drawing pencils you set out on the table are neatly lined back up into their metal tin, the kneadable eraser kneaded for a few frustrating seconds before it’s put back as well.

You zip your coat all the way up to your chin. It’s still freezing outside, and the walk from your studio to the subway, from the subway to the  _ other  _ studio, is always a cold one. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


At least you can move on from the watercolors.

Oil pastels! Still not a very desirable medium, but for today, you’ll take it. At least it’s saturated, at least you don’t have to worry about the whole thing coming apart with a spare drop of water. The way it stains your fingers and blends unpredictably is kind of charming, too.

You run through your demonstrations. You gesture to where the paper is located. You make a few suggestions for what people could draw: trees, landscapes, birds. Then you remember a box of handheld mirrors the studio owner keeps in one of the storage closets, and run over to get it.

“You can use them for self portraits,” you say, and then a particular man in the back scowls, and then you add that it’s optional.

But Steve takes two mirrors.

You don’t have time to analyze all of that. You walk around, offer a few words of advice. Shonna lays the preliminary sketch for a heron, and you’ve never seen grey and yellow look so  _ nice _ together. Your favorite couple, Marcie and Ahmed, draw each other, but neither of them can draw. They laugh at themselves as they misshape each other’s noses, miscalculate the distance between each other’s eyes.

It’s cute. You stop at them and laugh a little, before continuing your round to the back of the room, to Steve and Bucky.

“Everything working out okay?” You say, while Steve frowns into a mirror. 

“I feel kind of stuck-up doing this,” Steve says, and brings the mirror even closer to his face, right up to his eyes. 

You laugh a little. “Don’t worry,” you say, and peer down at his sketch, which is already looking uncannily like him. “It looks just like you! You even got the nose right.”

Steve nods, still bothered by the apparent narcissism of this activity. He pulls a peach pastel from the set. “I guess,” he says, unconvinced, and streaks the pastel over the side of his drawn face, and you quietly marvel over how well he understands shadow. “Are you okay?”

The question catches you off guard. 

“What?”

Steve sets his mirror down. 

Next to him, Bucky glowers at you, like he wasn’t smiling at your bad jokes in the cafe, like,  _ two _ days ago. He’s so  _ vehement- _ you’re starting to think that you dreamt up the entire encounter.

“You look kind of stressed,” Steve says, and then winces. “Sorry. I didn't mean it like that.”

“It’s okay,” you say quickly, and hesitate for a second, before thinking _ what the hell,  _ and deciding to just let it out. “I  _ am  _ stressed. I’m  _ so  _ stressed- Steve, I’m, like,  _ this  _ close to losing it.”

Steve’s eyebrows knit together. “What’s wrong?”

He’s so sincere. Always so nice, and you don't even care that Bucky’s glare deepens when you pull out the seat and sit down in it, because you are  _ dying  _ to tell someone.

“I have this show in the summer,” you say, and clench your hands, because just the thought of the show makes you want to wring your own neck, “but I still have  _ no  _ idea what to do. I mean, I do, but it’s like, I have point A and point B, but I don’t have the line connecting it. Does that make sense?”

“What are the points?” Steve asks, and takes up the mirror again, to analyze the lower portion of his face.

“Okay,” you say, and lean back in your seat, and maybe it’s a little unprofessional, but you’re cool enough that it really isn’t, “Point A is that I want everything to be busy. Lots of patterns and fabric and plants. Like, I don’t want there to be  _ any  _ resting space for your eyes, because that’s  _ boring. _ And point B is that I want to use people- and this is where the problem comes in, because I don’t know  _ what  _ people to use.”

You’re talking kind of fast, but Steve seems to still be understanding what you’re saying. “Why not?”

“Because I want it to be _ personal. _ For my previous stuff, I would just post ads on Instagram whenever I needed models, and take pictures of random people and paint them. But I don’t want to do that again, but I don’t know what I  _ want  _ to do. I want people to look at the people and say ‘wow, that’s personal,’ but I don't want them to be able to tell  _ how  _ personal it is. Like, personal at an arm’s length.

Steve stares at you like you have  _ definitely  _ lost it.

You pointedly don’t look at Bucky.

Then he reconsiders, and gives you a supportive little smile, and you can feel your stomach sinking further and further down. 

“I don’t fully understand that,” he says, and reaches not for the orange or red pastel, but the pale  _ blue  _ one. “But I’m sure you’ll get it. Just give it some time.”

You watch him outline his chin, the left side of his nose, little strokes of his eyebrows. Blue and leaving little smears and flakes of color, and creating this swirling pattern with one of the streaks of peach, like ocean and sand upon each other, so pretty and  _ bold. _

“Thanks, Steve,” you say, and he grins into his mirror, still adding blue. It looks amazing. “Also, would you ever consider switching careers? The art world is missing out on you.”

He blushes. 

“Use people you know.”

You and Steve turn fast to look at Bucky, still glaring. His red oil pastel, held tight in his gloved hand, looks ready to snap. 

At least you’re sitting diagonally from him, instead of directly across. At least you don’t back down from looking him in the eye. 

“For what?” you say, like you aren’t following, even though you are- you just have a feeling that he won’t tell you what he’s thinking unless you ask for it.

“For your painting thing,” he says. “Because it’s personal. To you.”

You stare at him like he’s crazy for a second or two, and he looks into his own mirror, set flat on the tabletop, without peering at his face. You glance over at his paper, at half a page full of perfectly identical red boxes, and realize that he’s drawing the ceiling panels.

Okay- _ lame.  _

But also, like, funny.

Then it starts to click.

“Wait,” you say, and you feel bashful, because he’s been listening to you this whole time, and in his silence he must have been thinking of you, and the thought of that is just too satisfying for you to let go of. He’s been  _ thinking  _ of you.

Or maybe he just wants you to leave.

“That works,” you say, and then you suddenly have the connecting line. “That works  _ perfectly.  _ It’s, like, not  _ personal,  _ but…”

“Familiar,” Bucky says, and you are half a red box away from leaning over the table and throwing yourself into his arms.

That’s exactly it.

“Thank you,” you say, and your brain is running a mile a minute, and he’s just staring at you. “Thank you so much. That’s exactly it, oh my god.”

You don’t even realize how far you’ve leaned over, hands balanced on the table, craning your head towards him. And you don’t even care- pieces are shifting and everything makes sense, and the weather outside isn’t cold, it’s beautiful! And this class is  _ wonderful. _ Bucky himself is wonderful. 

You float through the rest of the class. The clarity of your thoughts is jarring, the way you understand what you’re trying to do now. Flowers, fabric, and then you have an idea with a pair of earrings. You ache for a pen and sheet of paper to write it all down, but if you started doing it now, you don’t think you would be able to get up once the class ends.

Once, you smile at Bucky. He doesn’t return it- and you’re too in over your head to care.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


He’s not  _ genuinely  _ interested. 

This is a precaution. Bucky takes lots of precautions- he sleeps with weapons at his bedside, goes out with knives strapped to his body, always sweeps unfamiliar rooms before sitting, doesn’t tell anyone anything. This is just another thing thrown on top of his already exhausted routine, necessary to his safety and sanity and-

To his basic peace of mind.

He’s not a very good typer, so he asks JARVIS to look it all up instead, and transfer it to his overpriced, Stark-issued laptop. 

There’s relief in that action itself- he tells JARVIS the wrong name twice, because  _ that’s _ how personally _ disinterested _ he is. So disinterested that even something as simple as a  _ name  _ eludes him. 

He doesn’t care.

The information gets transferred to his laptop. Bucky takes his time, carefully scanning the screen, preparing to tuck away anything concerning, for future reference.

There is a  _ lot  _ of information.

Articles- too many articles. Editorials, interviews, reviews. And pictures, and even videos, and he wonders if Steve ever brought this up to him, this level of renown that apparently you possess, and Bucky just wasn’t paying attention. But no, that couldn’t have been true- he’s been genetically enhanced to  _ always  _ be paying attention.

He’s a slow reader, and whenever the fonts are too small it gives him a headache, so rather than reading an article, he goes to the pictures tab.

Your art shows up first. He clicks on the picture to enlarge it, and it takes a long while for him to fully comprehend what he’s seeing.

A woman dancing with a cow in the background, a woman with butterflies on her eyelashes. Two men wearing crowns of pearls, but when he zooms in closer, they’re birds. A figure in a dress, wearing sleeves that resemble fish, with a halo of koi fishcircling her head. Everything has to do with animals, and there’s so much movement, and he doesn’t like art, but he does have to admit that it’s all so  _ pretty. _

And there’s lots of  _ yellow.  _

And as he scrolls further down, there’s pictures of you. In some, you stand with people who look ridiculously pretentious, with weird hair and odd clothes and thick-framed glasses. Other artists, he guesses, who have to let  _ everyone  _ know that they’re artists before they even open their mouths. 

Then there’s pictures of just yourself. You, unsmiling next to a half-finished canvas, in the middle of twirling a paintbrush between your fingers. You, unsmiling in a white-walled photography studio. You, smiling while wearing a ridiculous sequined dress, which confuses him until he reads the description, and learns that the dress itself is an art installation.

It makes his head hurt. 

He looks some more, even though he’s not really learning anything. Or maybe he is learning, just nothing concerning like he was hoping for. Something that would justify this search in the first place, but all he’s found is that you have pretentious colleagues and wear ridiculous dresses and deserve Steve’s admiration the way you’ve been receiving it.

Eventually, he coaxes himself into clicking a link. An article with a big publication, too big for just an art instructor- but you’re not just an art instructor. you’re, like, good. The article is an interview, which could have just been recorded and uploaded, but for some reason, it was transcribed and written in article format anyway.

The twenty-first century is stupid like that.

When it was written, you had just had your first solo exhibition, and it was more successful than anybody ever anticipated. The interview is meant to be a little off-the-wall, charmingly eccentric, asking about favorite foods and then your future aspirations in the same sequence, and then debating different colors and some political situation within the same question. 

Bucky stumbles through a paragraph or two, not really comprehending anything but getting the gist, and his head hurts more, but he’s blissfully  _ relieved  _ of it all when Steve barges into his room without knocking.

He shuts his laptop screen so hard that the screen nearly cracks.

“Woah,” Steve says, and puts a hand up, but doesn’t take any steps back. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Bucky says, and stares at the laptop with fury, as if he’ll be able to close the tab that was still open through telekinesis alone. 

“O-kay,” Steve says, totally unconvinced. He hoists the bag on his shoulder- his gear bag, with his supplies. He’s headed out for an indefinite period of time, anywhere between three days and two weeks. In the bag is his suit, in its patriotic spandex glory, his other supplies, bandages and a gun and a sketchbook.

To pass the time, if he gets bored on the flight.

“Are you leaving now?” Bucky asks.

Steve nods his head. “Yeah. Just came to say bye.”

“You mean see you later,” Bucky corrects, because those two things mean different things, and the difference is enough to matter to him.

“See you later,” Steve says, and he shifts, one massive wall of muscle leaning from one foot to the other. He’s uncertain of something- like Bucky can’t handle himself on his own.

He can handle himself.

Bucky lifts one silver hand and waves.

***

He doesn’t need to go. 

Steve hasn’t returned, still somewhere in South America, away on a mission. It’s not like anyone is going to  _ check, _ either, if he attends or not. It’s not like this is  _ required, _ like he has some sort of moral or contractual obligation to show up.

Still, it’s become part of his routine, and deviating from routine makes his skin itch. As Monday strikes again, he slides into his seat in the art studio. At least he’s not too early; he doesn't know how he would be able to handle any pre-class conversation without Steve being there to do the actual conversating. 

You start right on time. Always so prompt.

“We’re going to be working with oil pastels again,” you say, and make a big gesture with your hands. You wear chunky gold earrings that wink under the lights. “But I’m going to let you do whatever you want. Draw whatever. I’ve got out a few different types of paper, and some different tools for creating textures- I’ll show you all how to use them really quick.”

You scrape a sheet of paper hastily colored purple with something that looks like a plastic knife. Then you use something that looks like a plastic-toothed comb, and then some other pointy plastic objects to make lines and whirls on the paper. Texture. He watches the paper, some, but mostly you.

You look over at him two times. No more than you do at anyone else, but he still notices- as a precaution. 

“Okay, I'm done. You all can get to work,” you say, and set the purple sheet down on your own table, at the front. “Have fun. Get crazy with it.”

Bucky looks down at the paper he’s set on the table, yellow-white and slightly textured. He looks at the oil pastels, sitting so dejectedly in their little cardboard dish, a product of low budget and disuse. 

He takes the yellow one.

  
  
  
  


You come over to his table some time later, after getting to everyone else. He’s always last, he’s noticed- because he sits at the back, and because you like to take your time talking with Steve. But Steve isn’t here today, which means you won’t linger, which means he can continue on sitting in peace.

“How’s it going?” You ask. One of your hands comes to rest on top of the chair across from him.

“Your shoe is untied.” 

Your smile falters as you look down, at your red sneaker- you wear hot red sneakers- but reaffirms itself a second later as you slide the chair out, and prop your foot up on it.

Bucky suddenly feels  _ off. _ Your knee rests slightly above his head, and your head is tucked down but still looming high over him, cast in shadow. He’s beneath- _ under.  _ And you’re double-knotting the laces of your shoe.

“Thanks,” you say, and it’s awkward to thank someone for something so little, but you don’t say it like it’s awkward. “I probably would’ve tripped on the laces. Anyways, again, how’s it going?”

He considers the question. “Fine.”

“Fine,” you repeat. You take your foot off the chair and tuck it back in, and then lean- loom even more- over him, looking over at his piece of paper. 

He glares at you, even though you’re not looking at him.

“Wow,” you say, and your eyebrows are creasing, and he thinks that you’re struggling to come up with something to say, and after seeing those paintings online, he can’t even take offense at it. “Those lines are so… straight. How are they so straight?”

Because his _ metal hand  _ has an internal  _ stabilizer. _

“They just are,” he says.

You look at him. Everything suddenly feels stuttered and slow, drenched in honey. He’s expecting some type of joke, and praying for the ground to open and swallow him up, bury him under six feet of tile. Has silence always been this unbearable?

“Awesome,” you say.

Then you look away and he’s able to breathe again, and you’re turning away, ready to flounce back over to someone else. He looks back down at his paper and picks up the pastel again, fingers pressing over the paper wrapper, so that he doesn’t get anything on his glove. He draws another straight line. 

“Wait, one more thing.” 

You turn around and his head  _ snaps  _ up, fully  _ alarmed.  _

You take in his expression and look like you’re about to laugh. But you stifle it back, bite on your lip as you pull the chair back out again and sit down, across from him. Steve isn’t even here- Steve isn’t even your motivation for being here, today, and all he’s thinking about is you in that ridiculous art installation of a dress. 

Floor-length. V-neck.

“So,” you say, and Bucky can’t look at you. In his peripheral vision he sees you curl your hands together, resting on top of the table. The glass on the watch flashes. “So, you know the idea that you gave me last week? With painting people I know? I started this painting of my mom- and all of these ideas in my head make sense to me now-  _ wait. _ Let me show you, first.”

He keeps his eyes dutifully trained on his paper. Still, he can hear the smile in your voice as you pull your phone out of your back pocket, tapping away at something before turning the screen around for him to see.

Your arm is stretched all the way across the table. Bucky leans in a little bit, to see the picture you’ve pulled up. 

A partially painted image of a woman that looks like you but not  _ you, _ with almost the same face as you, but with hands mottled with age and a mouth starting to droop at the corners. Your mom, apparently, sitting with her hands clasped the way you’re clasping yours. She wears earrings that look like huge flowers, lilies, or something, and in a white dress that looks halfway like a swirled illusion.

“Nice,” he says, grudgingly, and you keep your hand outstretched. He wonders if you want him to take the phone from you, if you’re waiting for him to say more. “I like the dress.”

You beam at him. He’s been looking at you without realizing. “Thank you. I actually got the idea or the pattern from Steve- I’m just stealing ideas, aren’t I- but did you see the thing he did with his self-portrait last week? The swirls? It was so pretty- I couldn’t help myself. Anyways, where is he today?”

“Out of town.”

Dread curls at the pit of his stomach. 

Bucky doesn’t know why, but he has the heavy, stone-cold realization that he does  _ not _ want to be talking about Steve right now.

It must show, because you’re in the middle of opening your mouth to say something, and then abruptly close it. 

“Oh,” you say, and you shift. He realizes that he doesn’t want you to leave yet, either. “Nice.”

You’re getting out of your seat. You must be feeling it too, the heaviness, the atmosphere so overwrought with polite dislike, because he still doesn’t like you, even though he knows your name now, but-

“What’s your next painting going to be?” he asks, so quickly that it comes off as a little frantic. 

Your eyes widen and you’re carried back down, drifting back into your seat.

“I’m so glad you asked that,” you say, as you settle in. For a second, you’re  _ frighteningly  _ put together, shoulders straight, hands neatly folded, earrings glinting. “I’ve been wanting to tell someone about it  _ so bad.” _

You want your next painting to be of your dad. A portrait of just his face, close enough to add little, inconsequential details. You have this idea where you create patterns that look like flowers out of his wrinkles. He has teeth that are always yellow, because he drinks so much coffee, you say, a habit you’ve picked up, but you want to paint them almost  _ neon,  _ bring as much attention to it as you can. His hair is thinning and you want to make it all blue, like a receding tide.

It devolves, and his grip on the pastel loosens as you fall into something more and more jumbled, divulging other ideas you have, about things that aren’t directly related. You want to go big- much larger than life. A canvas as big as your body, just to paint a head. You make your own canvases, too, and you show him your palms, skin beneath your fingers raised and bumpy, with a ropy pink scar on your right hand. It’s from an incident with a saw, you say, even though you know your way around a saw. He almost wants to touch it.

Bucky thinks of his own right hand, with as many scars as it has lines. What does that mean, in terms of fate? He knows his way around a saw, too, and many other bigger, dangerous things, but you don’t know or don’t care about it. It devolves further, you sink lower in your seat, shoulders curving forward, and you’re telling him something else about nothing, and you aren’t minding that he’s mostly focused on just listening.

  
  
  


You’re laughing when someone behind you clears their throat.

You turn back, to see Shonna, looking uncomfortable as she fiddles with the strap of her purse. 

“I’ve got to go,” she says, and, for whatever reason, gives you a _ look. _ “I finished my drawing, so I’m taking it with me. See you next week.”

“Have a good night!” You say, and cast a spare glance at your watch, to see how early she’s leaving. 

She’s not leaving early.

You’re running nearly  _ twelve  _ minutes over.

“Oh my god,” you say, quietly, and pull away from Bucky. You have to pull this back  _ together-  _ quickly, you stand up and clear your throat.

“Hey, everybody,” you say, and so many people older than you turn to look at you, but the situation you’ve put yourself in doesn’t let you appreciate the thrill of it. “I wasn’t paying attention- we’re running past time. You all can go ahead and head out. I’ll clean up today. I’m sorry.”

Bucky is ignored, and it’s funny how quickly you’re able to slip away from him, him and unrelenting blue eyes and a stoic silence to bounce all of your thoughts off of. You keep your back to him and head back to the front of the room, standing and exchanging pleasantries as everyone heads out, apologizing with smiles and chastising yourself for being so  _ careless. _

Nobody berates you, though. You keep on expecting them to. There’s a sudden, sharp pain in the back of your neck. They all leave, and then it’s just you, standing by the entrance and staring at all the tables you have to clean, all the unfinished art projects you have to slide on the art racks, alongside the sticky poster-painted houses and clouds and corner-suns drawn by the kids in your Wednesday and Thursday classes. 

All by yourself.

Or not. 

Bucky lingers, putting his pastels back in the tray. He’s so silent that you missed him the first time, even though he was standing right there. Isn’t he some type of spy? 

“Bucky, I got it,” you call. Without anyone in the room, it's like everything you just said to him didn’t happen. There’s no buffer and it’s just you and just him, and it's so _ empty. _ “You don’t have to clean up.”

Something in his gorgeous face shifts. You wish he was a little more expressive. His eyes hang dark underneath the brim of his dorky hat. 

“I can help you,” he says, and adds, after an  _ impossibly  _ long second of hesitation, “I’ll make sure you don’t break any jars.”

You laugh out loud, but you’re confused. First listening to you talk on and on, now offering to help you and trying to make a joke- he doesn’t  _ like  _ you enough to be doing  _ any  _ of it. You know you like him, or at least find him intriguing enough to disregard his douchiness, but, like,  _ still.  _ Something’s off. 

But then again, how do you deny him after that  _ joke? _

“Thank you,” you say, so formally, and you want to grimace. “That’s really nice of you.”

He blinks slowly, and you think that he’s going to smile, catch a ghost of it in his eyes. 

It vanishes too fast, as he slides the cover back on the tray of sad oil pastels. You’re about to make some cynical comment about the lack of funding for the arts, just so there’s something to occupy all this new space between you and him, so you don’t accidentally lessen the space by doing something dumb, like moving closer to him.

“Where do I put these?” He asks, holding the sad tray up.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Steve returns for the seventh Monday class! You’re so  _ happy  _ when he walks in through the doors, abandoning your stacks of paper and speed-walking toward with a smile and a bouquet of paintbrushes.

“Hey, Steve!” you say, and he spooks, a little, but relaxes when he sees it’s you. No Rina today- she’s been leaving early lately. Maybe there’s some residual fear in her, just from that stare she was subjected to, all those weeks ago. “It’s good to see you.”

You get those stares every week, multiple times an hour, are getting one right this _ second-  _ she needs to get over it.

He smiles and comes further into the classroom, meeting you over one of the tables. “It;s good to see you, too. Sorry I missed class last week.”

You wave him off. “Don’t worry about it. Here, take these for a second.”

In his massive hands, the paintbrushes look silly. Like dandelion stems, but it’s Steve, so he holds them gingerly, at a distance, like the wood might snap if he applies even the tiniest bit of pressure. 

It’s not a good thought that you have next- it’s a  _ deplorable  _ thought- but you wonder if all super-soldiers have hands like that.

Behind Steve, there’s Bucky, standing in his usual black ensemble and glower. You know, now, tht if you asked him to help, he would, but your mouth suddenly goes gummy and you trail off to the shelves instead, talking yourself up as you try to find a container for the brushes.

There, on the top shelf. How did it get all the way up there? You swipe it off and turn around, cheery and hopefully composed enough to not let any of your deplorable thoughts slip, and-

He’s there.

Not _ there,  _ not all up in your face the way you would  _ not  _ want him to be, but closer, next to Steve instead of behind. His cheeks are rosy. You look out the window, to see if it looks cold. His face is pink, but he looks cold.  _ Winter Soldier. _ You’re running hot, hot, hot.

“Hey,” You say, and politely smile, like while cleaning up last week, you didn’t spend an extra twenty minutes just  _ talking  _ to him.

“Hey,” he says, and does nothing, like the impassive brick he always is.

_ God. _

You can’t be like this. This isn’t… it’s not cute. It’s embarrassing.

“Help me find the palettes,” you tell him, and place the container on the table for Steve. “I’ve been looking for them, for, like, ten minutes, and I can’t find them. And we’re painting today, so we need palettes.” 

Steve dumps the brushes into the container. Bucky nods. He understands the importance of the palettes. 

“Okay,” he says, and in the time it takes you to turn back to the shelves, he’s already standing behind you, surveying the shelves with you. Steve is probably giving you a look- he and Bucky seem like the kind of friends that tell each other all of their feelings, paint each other’s nails and read each other's diaries- he probably knows what’s going on.

If he does, you would like for him to tell you. All you know is that you’re really  _ liking  _ this.

Bucky finds the box of palettes wedged in the back of one of the shelves, in between thick pads of watercolor paper and glass cases of craft knives.

“Thank you,” you say, as he hands the box to you, as his fingertips just barely brush against yours. “Thank you  _ so  _ much.”

You catch another ghost-smile. “You’re  _ so  _ welcome,” he says.

Behind Bucky’s back, Steve gawks at you in disbelief.

  
  
  


Acrylic paint- the love of your life. 

“It’s best for me to just let you guys loose,” you say, in your spot at the front of the room. Even now, your hands are itching, humming with energy, humming for a paintbrush. “If you need help, ask me, of course, but it’s more fun to just try and see what you can do.”

That’s part of why you love it- for its ease. Quick-drying, not water-soluble once dried,  _ saturated.  _ What is there even to explain? That you apply it with a brush? That you can blend with it? All of that is, like, obvious. All of it can be learned from trial, and any error can just be painted over.

Expression is so  _ simple,  _ with acrylic paint.

It’s messier, too, but nobody’s perfect.

You walk around. Shonna sketches out more birds- finches, yellow and mid-flight. Marcie and Ahmed start by painting without sketching first- one going for a sunset, the other palm trees. Classic. You catch a few others, silhouettes, some flowers, some abstract paint splatters.

Then, of course, you head to the back.

Steve is something out. You can’t tell what it is, yet, but you know that it's going to be beautiful. It’s already beautiful. He looks up and gives you a wordless smile, then gets right back to work. One of his hands is splayed over the sheet of chipboard, the other drawing quick, light lines with his pencil.

You wish that you could give them canvas. But canvas is expensive, and again- funding is bad, and you want to save the few you’ve scrounged up for one of the later classes, when everyone is more confident in their abilities. 

Bucky mixes paint on his palette. Red and… black.

“That’s a pretty color,” you say, nodding down at the sad maroon. He looks up at you and you ball your hands into fists, placing them on your hips, not because you put your hands on your hips, but because you feel like you should be doing that right now, with how he’s looking at you. Gutting you. 

He acknowledges you with a nod, and goes back to mixing the colors. Good grief, how much more is he going to mix? 

You’re suddenly searching your mind for something interesting to say.

It’s awkward, and you’re even more mad at yourself- how can you be awkward in your own class? You’re so  _ off  _ today. Even Steve is solely focused on his canvas, and you’re happy for it- he’s drawing and really getting into it, but now you have no reason to linger! 

You stay, for another awkward, insufferable second, before moving on to somewhere else.

It’s whatever. You want to think about it, but you push it out because there’s so many more important things to consider- like the painting of your mom nearly finished in your studio, the sketched-out canvas of your father, the dozens of other little ideas pushing up through the cracks in your thoughts, like delightful weeds.

You want to paint Rina. If her hair is still red when you see her, you’ll draw her upside down with poppies, wearing whatever crazy outfit she wants. You want to paint another friend, who’s constantly travelling but might be in New York next month, draped in gold jewelry and marigolds. You might even- you might even draw a few people you don’t talk to anymore, or people you don’t talk to enough, draw them with pansies and chrysanthemums.

Flowers. First, you were fixated on animals, but now it’s flowers- but it’s wholly unsymbolic, because symbolism gets trite, and you just want to make something that looks pretty. 

Nobody asks you for help. Acrylic is fun like that- it’s a medium where you can help yourself. The class gets loud- lively, even, and you just sit in your chair at your table and take it all in. 

Bucky, in the far back, works on his painting with concentration that rivals Steve’s. You look for too long.

He can probably feel your eyes on him. You wonder if you should look him up, but that’s weird.  _ Really _ weird, and what would you even search for? A Wikipedia article? Pictures? An interview? 

Maybe you shouldn’t, but you like the hot-and-cold mystery just how it is.

  
  


  
The class ends on time. You’re extra vigilant today, showing people how to lay their paintings on the drying racks, showing them where to dump their paint water. 

You say that you’ll wash the brushes. Bucky can tell that you don’t trust anyone else to do it properly. You say that you’ll wipe down the tables, too, and you’ll move all the supplies back to the shelves. All you want is for everyone to put their paintings away and wash their palettes. 

The work is done, and everyone files out, spurred by you wishing them all a good week. Steve lingers, as usual, and Bucky follows behind him. 

You didn’t talk to him that much, today.

“Did you figure out your painting yet?” Steve asks.

“I did,” you say, and tell him exactly what you told Bucky, but more clearly, more well-articulated. 

And less…  _ elaborate.  _ No talking about the idea for the second painting, no mentions of the canvases you make yourself. You don’t show him your palm. 

Steve chats with you for a few minutes, until the conversation fizzles out. He shifts his shoulders and tells you he’s going to go.

“Have a good week,” you say, smiling, looking back at Bucky.

Steve gets to the doorway, and Bucky stays right where he is, and his stomach does a flip, because he can’t believe that he’s really going to be  _ doing  _ this.

“You coming, Buck?” Steve says. 

“I’m going to stay back for a minute,” Bucky says, while looking at you.

He’s not a confident person, but he’s also not  _ not  _ confident. He just does what he has to do, without thinking, without sitting on it long enough for it to morph into anxiety, because when you've been impassive for seventy years, it’s hard to turn the faucet back on. Right now, though, he might be getting what they call  _ butterflies. _

“Why, is there something you-”

Steve cuts himself off. He understands.

“Nevermind,” he says, backtracking. “Okay. See you later.”

He leaves.

“What’s up?” You ask, as you head over to the sink. You’re so nonchalant, and he doesn’t know if he’s resenting it or grateful for it, so he just watches you pull cleaning supplies from the cabinet underneath. “Are you here to help me clean up?”

No, but he’ll do it, if...

“Yeah.”

You reach out and rip a wad of paper towels from the dispenser.

“Great,” you say, and he’s just thinking,  _ No, this is  _ not  _ great. _ You hand him a spray bottle and the paper towels. “Wipe down the tables, please. I’m going to get started with these brushes.”

He starts to wipe down the tables.

You get the sink running. 

The streaks of paint on the tables haven't dried yet, so it all comes off with no effort. He gets through it all pretty quickly, one table after another.

Then he’s at your shoulder, tossing the wad of paper towels in the trash, setting the spray bottle precariously on the sink’s edge, since your legs are in front of the cabinet.

What else could he do? Sweep? Turn off the lights? He doesn’t know if you would trust him to do either of those things. He could close the blinds, but the sky is in transition, from grey to blue to ink, and he likes the way the dark seeps into the room. 

It sets up the atmosphere.

You give him a quick smile, rub your thumb over the bristles of another brush. “That was fast.”

He shrugs.

It’s a dead conversation- he’s not used to this. Maybe he should be chatting you up, but he doesn’t chat people up, ever. You’re supposed to be the one that talks first, says something for him to go off of. He’s not  _ good  _ at this, but for whatever reason, he suddenly wishes that he was.

“Cleaning brushes is such a painful process,” you say eventually, trying to sound exasperated, even though you’re clearly not. “Takes forever- oh, wait. Not painful,  _ paint-ful.  _ Get it? _ ” _

He gets it.

“You’re funny,” he says, and it’s not much, but it’s something. He wants to laugh but doesn't.

You add another brush to the growing pile of clean ones, laying on a bed of paper towels. The sink water drains slowly, dirty grey-brown.

“I know,” you say. “But anyways, I have a question.”

“What is it?”

“Is Bucky your real name?”

The fuck? 

You’re genuinely asking, brows drawn close together. He wants to reach out and smoothen it. And also tug the strings of your apron loose, and hook a finger inside the hook of your earring. He’s wanting to do lots of things- all crazy, irrational things.

“No,” he says, and he sounds weird saying it, when all that’s weird is you having asked in the first place. Your frame of reference for him is so  _ poor-  _ which is better for him, better for everything. It’s almost _ flattering. _ “It’s a nickname.”

You open your mouth for the next question, but he beats you to it.

“My real name is James.”

You abruptly look over at him in disbelief. “No way. Really?”

“Really.”

You’re on the last brush. You run it under the tap and the bristles send streams of purplish paint water over your fingers, and turn your head, looking over at him. He meets you back, glare icy, even though inside, he’s burning up.

“You don’t look like a James,” you say, and grin at him, and keep yourself looking at him as you finally shut off the sink. 

He knows he doesn’t- that’s why he doesn’t go by it. But he’s going to indulge you, because he wants to.

“Don’t look much like a Bucky, either.”

“It’s a cute nickname, though,” you say suddenly.

His heart leaps to his throat. 

“You think it’s cute,” he says, and he shifts over and leans, against the wall, crossing his arms. He’s been standing too close, feels so unnaturally light. He can’t even pretend to dislike you anymore, not when you use the word  _ cute  _ to describe  _ him,  _ not when he likes it. Not when your name is rattling through his head over and over, a mile a minute.

“It’s  _ so  _ cute” you start, nodding along to yourself, “It’s like… nevermind. I don’t even remember what I was about to tell you. Can I get your number?”

That was  _ not  _ smooth. 

At  _ all. _

But it still works, doesn’t it? You’re not trying too hard, so he doesn’t have to try too hard, either.

“Yeah,” he says, and smiles at you- and takes extra satisfaction in the way you light up. Yellow and radiant.

“Okay.” You wipe your hands down on your apron before pulling out your phone. Its case is glittery pink. The tips of your fingers have pruned.

Before, this would have all been so easy. Bucky could have you beside him the day he met you, turned you over in a whirlwind, in a flurry of milkshakes and dancing to music nobody listens to anymore. He wonders if he should miss you- and then tries to imagine you in a red lip, peroxided curls and a modest day dress, and gets the answer for himself.

He doesn’t miss it.

“Here,” you say, and hand him your phone, and he takes it immediately, he’s so over in his head.

He types his number in with his right hand. When he hands the phone back, the question is already burning in his mind.

“When will I hear from you?”

He shouldn't ask. But he needs to know, always  _ needs  _ to know things. Things can only be so irrational, it has to start making sense sometime- and anyways, it doesn’t seem to bother you. You stare at his number, type something in and put your phone away, and the whole time you’re grinning, and he realizes.

You’re pretty. 

“Sometime.” you say, and you reach behind your back to untie the strings of your apron. As you bring the neck of it over your head, you wink. 

Sometimes, parts of him still feel frozen, trapped in ice, like he wants to smile but can’t remember how, like he’s forever moving too slow, falling too far behind and below.   
Right now, he’s all thawed out.

“You’re gonna keep me waiting like that?” He says, and he takes a daunting step forward, cocks his head to the side. He’s on autopilot, reacting on muscle memory alone- this is  _ flirting, _ this is charming like it’s ‘38.

You nod, adopt a mock seriousness. “I am,” you say. “I like to keep a little bit of mystery.”

“Mystery girl.”

“You know it.”

His heartstrings loop over themselves, tying themselves in a double-knotted bow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow!!! congrats for making it all the way though!! ily thank you for reading this 7k word long ramble. do i know what the hell even happened in this chapter? no. but that's okay.  
> my life has been so bothersome lately... updates might come kinda slow... but i'm going to try my best to update regularly! next chapter is going to be, as the kids say, Lit. Turnt. Brazy. it's gonna be a movie. just kidding but it'll be fun- we get to meet sam! and go drinking! and do a fun little photo shoot thingie ok that's all i can say for now!!!!  
> please please comment!!!! i would love to hear your thoughts!! reviews!!! feedback!!! talk to me. i need validation LOL ok by love u all!!!! <3


	3. marigolds and purple?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a variety of encounters. i could not tell you what exactly happens, but we meet sam!!  
> you can also find this on tumblr!! my @ is the same as on here, @suntrastar :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know how sometimes you do things without thinking? like driving down a familiar road or brushing your teeth? that's what it was like writing this chapter. head empty just keyboard. had like 71 different mental breakdowns with life-related stuff .... the person i was when i started this chapter is not the person i am as i finish it. meaning that every scene could have a different vibe/writing style??? the writing could be absolutely awful at random points in this chapter and you all will just ... have to deal with it. yay! also this is 9520 words long. i do not deserve rights take them away from me please. if you read this entire chapter i will love you for my entire life; i will name my firstborn child after your ao3 username. even if it's like chrisevanssexynipple420 or something. my future child chrisevanssexynipple420 and i thank you for checking this fic out. Enjoy!

“You want to paint  _ me?” _

Rina looks at you, shocked, mouth agape, lone cherry tomato speared on her fork.

“Yeah,” you say, and smile with your straw still in between your teeth. “You in a field of flowers.”

“You want to paint  _ me  _ in a field of _ flowers?” _

_ “Yes- _ that’s  _ literally  _ what I just said.”

The bustle of the restaurant is loud enough to drown out the rising volume of her voice.  _ Thankfully.  _ She’s being excessive, again- as if this is the first time she’s ever been the center of attention- but you’re fine with it today. You almost  _ like  _ it.

Today, her enthusiasm is almost  _ contagious. _

“I know,” Rina says “Duh. But, like, it’s just so crazy to me that you want to put  _ me  _ in your  _ second  _ solo show  _ ever- _ I mean, why me?”

“Because,” you say, and almost leave it at that, just to mess with her. “Because you’re my best friend, and the whole thing is focused on people I know. And your hair would look so good with poppies, and-”

“I’m your  _ best friend?”  _

“Obviously,” you say, even though to her, it might not be that obvious. “Who else?”

“That is  _ so  _ sweet,” she says, and leans back in her seat, dramatically clutching her hands over her heart. Rings sit on each of her fingers, gold and heavy stone. “You are  _ too  _ nice to me.”

She’s  _ really  _ milking it. But you’ll let it slide.

Rina gives you a self-satisfied smile, which you return without too much trouble. She’s so _ overwrought  _ and  _ showy  _ with how she sits, limbs sprawled all over, like they’ve been blown into disarray by the wind. Her hair, still glossy red, is parted down the middle and made up in two French braids, tips just barely brushing her shoulders. The hair ties don’t match.

She has no best friend. She probably has, like,  _ five  _ other people just like you, who she calls on when she feels like it, whenever she wants company, when she feels like humoring someone. Or when she wants someone to listen to her talk.

It comes as part of the lifestyle- can you really blame her?

“I know,” you say, veering back on topic. “Bucky gave me the idea.”

You do it on purpose.

Her eyes go wide.

_ “Bucky?” _ She says, incredulously. Like she doesn’t believe you. 

The feeling of being incompetent comes quick in a flash, and it takes too much to put it away. 

You’re  _ not  _ incompetent- his number is in your phone, after all, isn’t it?

“The Winter Soldier, I mean,” you say, and the words feel all wrong in your mouth. 

“No _. _ Shut up. You are  _ not  _ on first-name basis with the fucking  _ Winter Soldier.” _

“Oops,” you say. 

Her jaw _ drops. _

You’re grinning too hard. She didn’t expect this from you-  _ you  _ didn’t expect this from you! You take a bite of your food, some garlicky chicken thing you can’t pronounce the name of, to delay your response. It gives you time to think of what to say next.

Rina waits, stunned into silence.

“We’re… _ talking, _ I think,” you say. “I asked him for his number.”

“And he  _ gave  _ it to you?”

“Yep.”

There’s a story there, that you won’t tell her.

You texted him a day after class, on Tuesday. Was that too soon? You didn’t care, your mind was too muddled with so many other things- icy blue eyes and different techniques for drawing wrinkles and this week’s shopping list and the best color that went with orange-red, and the laundry that you still hadn’t done.

You were too giddy to get smart with it- all you sent was a simple  _ Hey.  _

All he sent back was a simple  _ Hi. _

Then, once you had read over his message too many times, you turned your phone off and pretended it never happened.

It’s too  _ nerve-wracking. _ And  _ pointless. _ You’re going to see him on Monday again, anyway! There’s plenty of time to text him- everything doesn’t have to be so  _ immediate- _ you’ll get around to it before then, for sure.

You just have to stop  _ thinking  _ so much.

“I  _ cannot  _ believe you,” Rina gushes, and from her expression, you believe her. “You’re all grown up! I am  _ so  _ proud of you. That man is  _ delicious, _ I  _ cannot-” _

“Do  _ not  _ describe him as _ delicious, _ oh my god.”

You burst out laughing as Rina raises one eyebrow, filled in dark. Her eye makeup always _ kills. _ “Am I wrong?”

“Well…  _ no, _ but…”

***

Steve leaves, but Bucky stays back at the end of class to help you clean up. Acrylics again, and it’s the second-to-last class, so you had finally brought out the canvas.

Canvas means more fun, but more mess. More paint splatters on the tables, more brushes with clogged-up bristles.

Bucky doesn’t smile as he says bye to Steve, and it makes you feel a certain type of way _ , _ but you stick to business. Cleaning supplies are pulled out, paper towels are ripped from the dispenser. Bucky starts on the tables while you roll up your sleeves and start the sink, preparing to start on the brushes.

God- these  _ brushes.  _

If these brushes were washed incorrectly, you would  _ cry. _ They’re new, and high-quality, and the bristles are still soft and not yet frayed or discolored, and the handles are made of thick, clear plastic, and they come in different sizes and styles, and you can barely believe it, but they all even have  _ rubber grips. _

They’re  _ really  _ nice brushes.

“You didn’t text me back,” Bucky says.

You wish the sink was loud enough to swallow all sound, swallow you up within it.

Still, you look over your shoulder, giving him a pained smile while he scrubs at a spot of dried paint. He looks back at you, but you can’t tell what he’s thinking. 

_ Of course  _ you didn’t text back- thinking less is way harder than it seems.

“I wanted to,” you say, “but I got nervous. Sorry.”

You turn back to the sink. It’s a little easier to breathe without having to look at him.

“You got nervous,” he repeats, voice still  _ so  _ unreadable. 

Is he mad? He always  _ looks  _ mad, always  _ sounds  _ mad- you can’t ever tell if there’s anything behind it.

“Yeah,” you say, and shrug, like it’s no big deal at all, like you chicken out of things all the time, like texting is always such a cause for concern. “I didn’t know what to say. What was I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know.”

_ Ugh. _

The sink water slowly circles the drain. You don’t look past it, only keeping your eyes on the sink and the remaining brushes- it helps calm your heart, a little. Bucky is probably on the last few tables. All of the paintings have been neatly propped up on the drying racks.

Bucky painted his entire canvas yellow.

You are  _ so  _ dumb.

“Um, okay” you say, shutting off the sink. The really nice brushes are all neatly piled up on the counter on top of a folded paper towel, washed and drying. “What if I was like, ‘hey, Bucky, after this class ends and I’m not your art instructor anymore, would you want to meet up sometime?’”

You turn back around and lean against the sink. It’s an effort that deserves applause- you look so  _ collected, _ while your heart is beating  _ way  _ too fast, and Bucky, its forever opposite, just stands behind a table, spray bottle in hand.

Your hands are sweaty.

He nods slowly, and it’s a victory in and of itself- the action nearly has you weak at the knees.

“Meet up,” he repeats, voice low, like a halfhearted growl. Disdainful, kind of. “Like a date.”

You wipe your hands on your apron. It’s a  _ totally  _ normal,  _ totally  _ relaxed movement. But then you’re wishing that you wore something cuter- was this sweatshirt really the  _ only  _ thing you had? Do you not own, like, a  _ blouse,  _ or something? Didn’t you just do your laundry?

_ Fuck, _ you’re being annoying. 

“We don’t have to call it that,” you say. “We can just… hang out. Eat something. Go on a walk.”

You say it casually, but honestly, you  _ like  _ nice dates. Dates at art museums, dates at fusion restaurants, dates at movie theaters showing indie films in foreign languages. Anything eccentric, haphazard. Spontaneous.

But you also like seeing him smile _ , _ and you like to talk, and you like to be listened to- and he is  _ giving  _ you that. 

This is a different type of  _ everything. _ It’s all upside down, inside out, twisted over in itself. You have to approach it all differently, maybe it’s because he’s too quiet or too famous or too dangerous or  _ whatever  _ the hell, but none of it  _ matters. _

What matters is that you  _ want  _ it. 

You’ll realign your compass.

“Okay,” he says. “I like walks.”

“Great,” you say, and go on without hesitating, because long nights have you tired and hesitation is for the weak, “I like  _ you.” _

Bucky Barnes, real, unfitting name James, clutching dirty paper towels and a spray bottle,  _ smiles  _ at you. 

It’s wrong, but you could just  _ bite  _ him.

A sudden, unprompted thought hurls through your mind- you want to paint him.

***

The last art class. 

It was once long-awaited, but now, you’re actually sad to see everyone go.

You buy a tray of cookies. It’s the least you can do- everyone has been so  _ nice  _ to you, so respectful and cooperative. Everyone has made things  _ fun. _ You don’t know if you were doing anything right, but it sure as hell has been  _ enjoyable.  _

Crumbs might get in the paint, but’s a small price to pay.

“Knock yourself out,” you announce.

The tray is set out on the middle table. You forgot the package of napkins back at your studio, so you gesture to the paper towel dispenser.

Then you long for the kids in your Wednesday and Thursday classes, because unlike these people, they wouldn’t be looking so  _ dead  _ at the prospect of free  _ cookies. _

You shake your head and return to your perch, tucking your feet behind the legs of the stool. 

Eventually the conversations trickle out, slowly turning the room warm and lovely and bright. You listen in, a little, savor it, and hop back up. There’s nothing to do- might as well make some idle chitchat, one last time.

Shonna uses a small brush to add purple highlights to the feathers of a pigeon. It’s  _ gorgeous-  _ and you don’t even  _ like  _ pigeons- but you like her painting style and the jewel tones she’s adding amidst the grey, and the orange beak, and the washed-out yellow background she’s painting over. 

“Wow,” you say, and she adds another purple highlight with a flick of her hand. “I  _ cannot  _ stop looking at this pigeon.”

“Thank you, honey,” she says, without looking up. 

She’s too focused for you to stay for too long- you have to leave the pigeon for others. Marcie waves you down and gives you the latest update about her son, abandoning her half-painted rose while she launches into a bit of a tirade- her son wants to pierce his  _ nose, _ isn’t that _ ridiculous? _

“Hey, _ I  _ wanted to pierce my nose when I was his age, too,” you say, and spout something about self-expression that makes her frown. 

Ahmed chimes in. You have  _ no  _ idea what the blob he’s painting is supposed to be, but you like it. “I’ve been trying to tell her the same thing! These kids are modern now- these are just the things they do!”

“These are just the things we do,” you echo. 

Marcie heaves a heavy sigh. 

***

You head over to a few more tables, and it goes by too fast and too slow, but then you’re suddenly there in the back, with your star student, and your…

With Bucky.

“I really like how this is turning out,” Steve says proudly, as you approach them. 

Then, he adds, almost childishly, “Don’t look until I’m done.”

He has a half-eaten sugar cookie sitting by his paint water.

“I won’t look” you promise, and all at once, you’re almost emotional- he is _such_ a nice guy. He’s like the human embodiment of a _golden retriever._ “Don’t worry.”

Steve nods, pleased and nervous at the same time. You pointedly look away from the painting as you slide into a seat, across from Bucky and his yellow canvas.

Yellow and  _ black  _ canvas. He’s hunched over with a fat-bristled paintbrush in hand, adding black stripes, blobby and unevenly spaced, but still unbelievably  _ straight. _

It is all so  _ cute. _

“Very bumblebee-esque,” you say, and his forehead creases. “I like it.”

Steve smiles.

Bucky adds another line. He didn’t take a cookie. He should’ve- the chocolate-chip is  _ so  _ good.

“Thanks,” he says. 

And Steve just smiles wider, and you almost kick him under the table, and Bucky gives you an unsmiling look that turns you to jelly.

Hat aside, he is looking  _ exceptionally  _ pretty today. All hair and eyes and bone structure- it makes you want to  _ do  _ something, like reaching out and grabbing him by the collar of his jacket. Like running a hand over his jaw. Catching his stubble under your fingertips. 

Parting his hair down the middle and French braiding it.

Taking a picture- it'll last longer.

“I'm going to miss seeing you guys around.”

Steve gives you a surprised look and shakes his head. He has one arm protectively curled around his canvas, even though you’re still  _ not  _ looking. 

“Oh, I’m sure  _ one  _ of us will be seeing you around,” he says, and grins.

You glare at him.

Bucky laughs.

***

The goodbyes aren’t as bad as you thought they would be.

People leave with a simple goodbye and a brief thank you, shrugging on their coats and gingerly clinging to their still-damp artwork. Marcie makes you promise her that you won’t pierce your nose. One woman who would always come to the class with a huge coffee cup sets her painting aside to sweep you into a hug.

It’s very  _ gratifying. _

Steve and Bucky linger. 

Shonna does, too, but for a completely different reason.

You want to give her Rina’s contact. She probably has some painting class available, if Shonna’s interested in that sort of thing, if she’s okay with being around so much  _ personality.  _

And you also want to give her  _ your  _ contact- so she can keep on sending you pictures of those birds.

“One sec,” you tell her, and reach for your purse, sitting on the counter.

Bucky is standing closeby,  _ remarkably  _ closeby, and you accidentally brush against him.

He goes rigid. 

But you’re busy pulling out a pen and a scrap piece of paper, and then you’re using the counter as a hard surface to write against, shoulders angled away from him, and you’re talking all the while- you don’t have the spare second to be concerned.

“This is my email,” you say, adding a smiley face after the address. “Send me your art. And, like, talk to me. Send me your grocery lists, if you want- I don’t care. Here.”

Shonna takes it and gives you a smile. There’s a glimmer of something in it, a knowing.

“Thank you,” she says, and laughs a little, and you suddenly fiercely miss your mother. “I’ll keep the last bit in mind.”

She looks past you. Steve, standing a few feet away, holding the canvas he still hasn’t shown you, nods respectfully. And Bucky, standing near the counter, still near you, even though he’s looking at you like you’ve  _ scalded  _ him.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says. 

You almost ask,  _ “to what?” _ But she’s already left- Shonna and her pigeons are gone.

Steve steps up fast to take her place. 

You still have no time to think. 

“So, this is the finished product,” Steve says with no preamble, and with a great flourish that makes you laugh in delight, he turns the canvas around.

Oh.

_ Wow. _

You’re not dizzy. 

But you will be, if you keep on looking at this- a tangle of vines on a wall, with blooming flowers in what should be the wrong colors, dappled in light from a window you can’t see, drawn from a strange perspective. The leaves are really big and the vines are really small, and then it’s flip-flopped, and he has a hot-pink underpainting that he didn’t fully cover, so there’s pink in the leaves, pink on the wall. Pink in the un-pink flowers.

“Fuck,” you say, and then go quiet.

Steve tenses.

Now you have  _ two  _ very strong men looking at you weird.

You should probably fix that.

“I don’t- I don’t know what to say,” you say, stumbling over your words, feeling cotton-mouthed. “There are  _ no  _ coherent thoughts going on in my head right now. I’m just- where did this even- how did you even come  _ up  _ with this?”

“I tried to do that thing you said,” Steve says, sounding uncertain. He shifts and the painting moves with him, sending pink flickering over your eyesight. “No empty space. Because it’s boring.”

What is this called, again? Artists supporting artists?

“It  _ is  _ boring,” you say in agreement, and your voice comes back to you, all at once. “And holy  _ shit,  _ you pulled it off so well. I’m obsessed with the pink underpainting- it’s everything. You literally  _ invented  _ pink. And can we talk about these vines? How long did it take you to draw them all tangled up like that? And the flowers- you even gave them little stems, ugh. And all the colors! And this  _ lighting- _ I’m sorry, I have too much to say.”

Like watching a flower bloom, Steve unfurls at your praise, blush deepening with each compliment. It’s so wonderfully endearing, and internally, you sigh in relief.

“Thank you,” he says, and bursts into the brightest smile you’ve ever seen. “Also, we have one more question.”

“We?” You ask, and Bucky clears his throat.

You turn to him. 

Already, you have a whole slew of problems- you have to sketch out an emerging idea and place an order for new brushes, ones with rubber grips, and you have to cook dinner when you get home because lately you’ve been ordering too much takeout, and you have to organize your closet, and you have to give an adequate and peppy response to whatever Steve is about to say-

You’re bursting at the seams.

There isn’t much room for anything else. Any concern.

“You have something to say, Bucky?” You ask, and waggle your eyebrows.

He doesn’t crack a smile- just how you like it.

“I do,” he says, smugly, and then says your name in a way that ties your stomach up in knots, that has you thinking of flowers and chiffon.

“We were wondering if you’re free tomorrow,” Steve says, and then invites you out for _ drinks, _ for tomorrow evening.

So you’ve passed the initial threshold of friendship, and now you’re onto group drinking! That’s exciting- and you’ll get to see Bucky, and you’ll get to postpone that tedious process of planning out a date- a  _ hang-out,  _ and you’ll have an opportunity to show up in something besides jeans and sad sweatshirts. 

There hasn’t been a chance to show it off to him, yet, but you can  _ dress. _

Steve mentions another friend named Sam, who might join, too, if that’s okay with you. 

“I’m cool with it,” you say. “The more the merrier, right?”

He has to be a decent guy, if Steve associates with him, and you like new people.

But doesn’t Steve also associate with, like,  _ Tony Stark?  _

That man is oh-so  _ problematic.  _ He rolls out with a new scandal every month. He’s had enough scandals that he could release a line of red-and-gold-themed calendars- with the dates of each scandal marked in. Each month could have its own photo, too, coinciding with the dates. 

_ Tony Stark, _ making peace signs at a court hearing.  _ Tony Stark,  _ wasted on a yacht.  _ Tony Stark, _ in the middle of an interview where he bashes people who have absolutely nothing to do with him.

“That sounds like fun,” you say, and Steve lets out a breath of relief, “but I have to ask, about Sam? Is he, like, a…”

An Avenger? A genetically-altered individual? A prominent public figure with a stupid amount of money?

“He’s a really nice guy,” Steve quickly says.

“He’s a pain in the ass,” Bucky says, immediately after him.

***

As it turns out, Sam Wilson is  _ not  _ a pain in the ass. 

He is really nice, but more importantly, he is _ funny. _

Bucky texted you the address a few hours ago. You walk into the bar and at once, you’re assaulted by an excess of  _ dark- _ dark floors, dark lighting, dark accents on the decor. None of it is dingy, just low-lit. It’s a nice place.

It might be a little  _ too  _ nice- nothing like the sticky-floored, rowdy sports-themed bars you usually hit when you’re in the mood to get hammered. 

You catch the back of a head, wavy brown hair and thick shoulders, in a booth tucked into the corner. Steve, sitting opposite him, against the wall, catches your eye and waves you over. 

Next to Bucky is a guy you’ve never seen before, Sam. Black skin, close-cropped hair, looking over his shoulder to flash a grin at you. Even in a simple shirt, you can tell that he is  _ built. _

He’s an Avenger, then. Maybe.

You’ve just barely slid in beside Steve, and you’re grinning and making some dumb comment about the disaster that is the New York subway system, when Sam fixes you with a gleeful look and leans forward.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” he says, casting a side-eye at Bucky. “I’m not joking when I say this- I was starting to think that Barnes  _ made you up.  _ He’s always doing crazy shit like that. Anyways, you will  _ not  _ believe why I’m actually here.”

You humor him, because why the hell not? “Why are you actually here?”

Already, you can tell that he has that vaguely-ironic, purposely-stupid sense of humor, which you always find absolutely  _ hilarious.  _ And you want to know what he means by  _ crazy shit. _

Bucky looks up at you for a few charged seconds, telling you something you can’t decipher, and then ducks his hand back down to stare intensely at his drink. Something amber, with ice cubes. 

“I’m here to make sure that you don’t feel bad. Because these two  _ fossils,” _ Sam says, and Steve winces, “can’t get drunk. But I can! So if you wanna get trashed, I’m game.”

Under the dimmed lights, Sam’s teeth shine perfectly white. All of Steve’s friends seem to have perfectly white teeth.

“It’s because of the serum,” Steve says, and you just gawk.

They both can’t get  _ drunk? _

Because of their fucking  _ superhero vaccine? _

“What the hell,” you say, and rest your elbows on the tabletop. Bucky’s gaze follows your arms, starting at the hems of the sleeves, trailing up to your shoulders. “That’s so… Steve, if you can’t get drunk, then why are you torturing yourself with that  _ beer?” _

“It’s for the feeling,” Steve says quietly, blushing pink, and Bucky is still quiet, and you have a feeling that this has something to do with nostalgia, or World War II, or something. The good old days.

Sam catches it too, so he buts in, quickly bringing the conversation back to something less layered, less wired. 

He’s a man with nothing to hide. He tells you who he is with no hesitation, without trying to skip over or disguise anything- he’s  _ open.  _ He’s a war vet, too, and now an Avenger- he’s the  _ Falcon.  _ He has, he says, a pair of fancy-ass  _ wings.  _ And the coolest outfit.

“Wait,” you say, and you’re suddenly  _ dying  _ to know, “what does it feel like to fly?”

His eyes light up. 

“You know when you’re trying to sleep, and then you randomly get that feeling that you’re falling, and your stomach does that thing?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like that, but you can  _ control  _ it. It’s fucking  _ amazing.” _

He launches into a whole spiel, talking your ear off about the feeling of high-altitude wind on his skin and aerodynamics and some science-y things you don’t understand, and you get your own beer and enjoy the sweet feeling of getting buzzed on a weeknight, and as the edge you constantly have on yourself shifts, the seats shift, too.

You don’t know how, but you end up next to Bucky, in between him and the wall. Not touching, but close. Sam is across from you and Steve is next to him, and all of a sudden they’re talking about  _ Chex Mix. _

“If the Avengers were Chex Mix pieces,” Sam says, throwing the word  _ Avenger  _ around casually enough to make Steve’s hesitations seem horrendously uptight,  _ “I  _ would be the garlic chip. The best part of the whole damn bag. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yeah, those chips are definitely the best part,” you say, adopting a mock-seriousness. “And Tony Stark would be one of those knobby-ass, crunchy little mini breadsticks.”

Sam mirrors your expression, nodding gravely, like what you’re both evaluating is a highly  _ intellectual  _ subject. “I  _ completely  _ agree. And for Rogers- man, you’re a pretzel.”

You narrow your eyes. “Square or circle?”

“Uh,” Sam says, turning to survey poor, unprepared Steve, looking equal parts bewildered and embarrassed. “Square.”

_ “Great _ choice. And Bucky?”

“Bucky…” Sam hesitates, and the briefest smile flashes over his face before he schools his expression back into objectivity, “Bucky is one of those original Chex squares. Sorry.”

“That’s cold,” you say, and Sam smiles again, and leans all the way back in his seat, bringing his hands behind his head.

“He’s not one of the yellow squares, though- those are actually good,” Sam starts, grin growing wider by the second, and you can’t tell if it would be rude to laugh. “He’s not one of those squares with extra seasoning, either. Bucky is just one of the plain brown squares. The wheat squares, or whatever the hell. Have you ever, like- have you ever wondered what the sole of a shoe tastes like? Or the eraser on top of a pencil? That’s what those taste like- that’s what he is. Just one of the plain Chex squares.”

Your jaw  _ drops. _

A roast like  _ that  _ from a halfway drunk man is absolutely  _ scathing. _

Bucky just levels a glare. 

He’s used to this, you think. Is that his crazy shit? That he never reacts to anything?

You’re definitely a little tipsy- this is obviously no time to get wasted, but the edge has certainly been taken off, the corners of your world having gone hazy. In a lull, you watch a well-dressed man standing by the vestibule doors lean past your field of vision and receive what you think is a kiss on the cheek.

Without thinking, you lean close to Bucky and cup a hand over his ear. 

Maybe he won’t react, maybe he will, but you’re not going to give him the  _ time  _ for either.

“I think that  _ you’re  _ the garlic chip,” you whisper loudly, and you’ll probably cringe yourself into oblivion over it when you're sober, but you think he shivers- and then he  _ snorts. _

“Thank you,” he says, and Sam putters out, giving you an amazed look. 

***

“Heyyy,” you say later, turning to Bucky, when time has passed and you’re no longer on the subject of Chex Mix and he’s still a little too quiet. “What’s up?”

He’s quiet and troubled, drinking what might be whiskey like it’s water. Is it whiskey? You didn’t think that people actually  _ drank  _ whiskey- just kept it around in crystal decanters and silver flasks to look cool, like they’re main characters in a movie.

“The sky,” he says dryly, like you didn’t say that same exact shit when you were in  _ middle school, _ hopelessly thinking that it was the  _ slickest  _ comeback. 

“Very funny, James,” you say, and he huffs, and you feel a brief flash of panic, and then you’re almost apologizing, when he grins. 

You know maybe three whole things about him, but you’ll press yourself up against him right here and now, under the low light of a fancy bar, with rain sliding down outside the window panes, with his friends right across the table. You don’t care.

His friends can tell.

“We’ll be  _ right back,” _ Steve says suddenly, making a very  _ showy  _ display of getting up with Sam. Both of them send you obnoxious grins and suggestively raised eyebrows. 

Bucky glares. You can’t stop smiling.

“You kids have fun,” Sam calls, and you laugh.

Just you and him, then. The mood shifts fast, turning from one thing to… another. Bucky’s eyes reflect the window outside, falling dark and darker, and you’re slipping, too. 

“You look really nice,” Bucky says, and his eyes dip down in the  _ slyest _ fucking move- you’re almost  _ proud  _ of him for it, for having such  _ game. _

A spark of heat flashes through you, as he takes you in slowly, like he’s trying to savor it. 

You opted for a slightly  _ tighter  _ shirt, and a pair of jeans, but they’re your  _ nice  _ jeans. The ones without any weird streaks of paint on the thighs. And you wear a beaded necklace, and in your ears, a pair of fun, delicate hoop earrings, dangling with charms in the shape of crescent moons.

“Thanks,” you lean back, into the wall, letting your voice drop to match the tone of his. “You do, too.”

He just stares at you, unamused. Still dark, and dangerous.

_ Purple  _ chiffon, you think, and  _ marigolds.  _ The flower was meant for another friend, but she’ll have to manage, because now, you can only see  _ Bucky  _ with marigolds, with no room for anyone else.

“So,” you say, before the silence carries on and makes you do something stupid, “Done anything fun lately?”

He tenses. Again. 

There’s all these things that you know you can’t ask him, things about his job and his hobbies and his metal fucking arm, which you still haven’t seen- which you’re fine with, but, like. It’s the fact that he has a metal arm in the first place- he is so  _ detached  _ from everything you know, and you aren’t sure if you know how to navigate it all. You don’t think he knows how to navigate it, either.

He’s hesitant, you think. But not unwilling.

You’re just going to roll with it.

”I watched a movie today,” he says, sounding so smooth that your clutch on your drink wavers. His eyes are raking, cold.

Red marigolds. Not the orange ones. Red marigolds with the little golden borders on the edges of each petal.

“Which movie?”

He shakes his head. “I forgot the name” 

“Okay, well, what was it about?”

“Talking dogs.”

You laugh and he smiles, and then you feel light enough to float. “Talking dogs?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and he takes a sip. His mouth is  _ very  _ pink. Layers, you think, layers and overlapping, to make the fabric look hazy. Washed-out. “They talk when their owners aren’t home.”

“That sounds right up your alley,” you say, and you’re giggly and he’s all smiley and maybe you’re being embarrassing, but whatever, because he’s looking at you like he’s never been smiley with anyone else before, and you really,  _ really  _ want to lean in.

You’ll wait.

***

Sam comes back with Steve a little bit later, but it isn't until you’re getting ready to leave when he brings it up.

“You’re good for him,” Sam says, while Bucky and Steve have gone to pay. Your drinks are on him- how chivalrous. “Honestly, you’re probably  _ too  _ good for him.”

You laugh as you shrug on your jacket. “Doubt it.”

“No, I’m serious,” he says, voice dropping to an urgent whisper. You realize at once that he’s about to say something heavy, something concerning. “He has been through some  _ fucked-up shit. _ It’s not his fault, obviously, but it’s always  _ there.  _ He’s never going to get over it. Sometimes he doesn’t sleep. He just stays awake, for like, three whole days at a time. Sometimes he just disappears. He never tells anyone where he goes. Sometimes he does this thing where he-”

“I get it,” you say quickly, and he must be able to see your sudden dread, because his face softens.

“I’m not trying to scare you. I just want you to know- that that’s what you’re getting yourself into.” 

“Thanks,” you say, and zip up your coat, and then pat your pockets even though you know you have everything, just so you have an excuse to not say anything. Sam gives you a long look, before sighing and pulling out his phone.

Obviously, Sam is trying to tell you that Bucky is  _ damaged. _

You’re not in the business of fixing things, but you’ll take him as he is anyway, because...

“Sam?” you say, and he looks up from his phone. 

“Sometimes,” you start, and swallow down whatever anxiety is starting to surface, “Sometimes he’s being all quiet and moody and angsty and whatever, I get that same feeling that you’re telling me. But then, like, he just  _ does  _ something. Like, he’ll make a joke, or  _ say  _ something, and then it’s like-” 

You struggle with your words- it’s like everything you want to say is there, but you can’t reach it. Sam slides his phone into his pocket, and Bucky is coming back, with Steve in tow, moon and sun, peas in a pod. You wonder if Sam makes their duo a trio, if he’s the third invitee to their slumber party, or if he’s just on the fringes.

“It’s like- It’s like, _ okay.  _ Like, I know who he is and it’s all okay.”

He nods, and smiles at you, and you sincerely hope that he isn’t just on the fringes.

***

The paintings of your parents are finished- and they are _ good. So _ good. Every detail is there, every color. Every line. The wrinkles and the flowers and the lace neckline of your mother’s dress. Looking at them makes you feel so  _ proud- _ it’s been  _ forever  _ since you were able to properly convey your thoughts onto canvas.

They’re  _ big,  _ too. Larger than life. You’ll have to rent one of those orange U-Haul trailers to transport them.

On a new canvas is Rina, only halfway painted. She looks good, too, even though right now she’s just a head and a torso and two floating feet, because getting the colors on her legs right is harder than you thought. It’s tricky to paint the shadows and contours without her legs just looking bruised- there’s so many flower stems overlapping with the skin, so you don’t have a lot of room to work with.

You’ll figure it out.

You might be a little in over your head, actually. Confident- a little  _ too  _ confident.You don’t even have this painting  _ done,  _ and you’re itching to start on another. A possible recipe for disaster, but every time you have a spare second, in the shower or on the subway or when you’re trying to fall asleep, you find yourself thinking about it. 

Not in bits and pieces the way most of your thoughts are, but a fully formed concept; a real, true image  _ brimming  _ with fullness, already starting to spill over into everything you do. 

You have it all figured out. You know what techniques you’ll use. What composition, what  _ colors. _

You text Bucky.

Nothing crazy. You know you could scare him off, or maybe not, not anymore- by the end of the night at the bar last week, you sat next to him and bumped up against him and whispered in his ear, and right before you left he flicked the charm on your earring, watched sway, and then he  _ smirked- _ and you almost  _ died. _

You text him  _ Hey _ , and then set your phone on the farthest surface you can find, pointedly avoiding it. Rina’s calves need attention- you have paint to mix.

Ten minutes later, your phone rings.

You can’t help it, you’re weak-hearted- you drop  _ everything  _ and dash to your phone, dodging your carts of supplies and hopping over a stack of toppled canvases that you never bothered to pick up, and pick up on the third ring.

“Hi,” you say into the receiver, slightly out of breath.

“Hi,” he says, and he sounds slightly out of breath, too.

“Um,” you say, and laugh a little, with the heady rush of nerves flooding in, “I wasn’t expecting you to call.”

“I called because I’m a slow texter,” Bucky says.

You feel so _ fluttery. _ When was the last time you felt this fluttery?

“Oh. That’s okay. I was just wondering if you... wanted to meet up sometime soon? Tomorrow, maybe?”

Tomorrow is Saturday, a day off. For you, at least- do Avengers get days off?

“Okay,” he says, and you swear he sounds pleased. You want to cut straight to something else. Skip, jump,  _ leap  _ over all of these steps, so you can get to what you really want to tell him. “I think I can do that. Where are we meeting?”

“There’s this little cafe we can… we can head there first, I’ll text you the address, but I have this idea,” you say, and wait for his invitation to continue, with your heart beating  _ dangerously  _ fast, thrumming like it might just burst through your ribs.

“What’s your idea?”

_ Thank you, _ you almost say, but don’t.

The steps are skipped, formalities disregarded- you just tell him.

It’s the perfect time- there’s that currently rare, pretty daylight that grows with each passing day streaming in through your windows unfiltered, blocked by no blinds or curtains. You pace a little, at first, right in the sun, and then sit down on a stool, toeing the smooth wood floors beneath, cradling the phone. 

You start it off simple, with the marigolds.

_ Red  _ marigolds, you specify, because you feel like you have to. Then you delve deeper, into chiffon and lighting and this thing you want to try out with layering, where two elements that overlap go by a completely different color scheme. Like, you say, like the flowers are red and the clothes are black, but the places where they meet are electric pink or orange or blue or something else unusual and  _ distracting. _

Save for the sound of his breathing, Bucky is quiet. You can tell that he’s really  _ listening, _ probably sitting down somewhere and  _ focusing  _ on you, not doing some other task with your voice as background noise. He doesn’t interrupt when you go off on a tangent about the importance of natural lighting or contradict yourself with opposing statements on color choice, or when your words start to deteriorate, when they start pouring out so fast that they slur together and become less than coherent.

Your mind is going even faster- you can see the image even when you  _ blink. _

Something at the back of your thoughts tells you to stop, to slow down. You need to  _ chill out. _

But the idea is so _ vivid, _ so you _ can’t- _ you  _ don’t,  _ not until the idea is totally exhausted and you give a final sigh and go quiet, not until after giving what could count as an entire fucking  _ speech. _

When Bucky speaks again, he sounds tentative. 

“I… like it,” he says, and maybe he’s holding his phone at a bad angle, because his voice is quiet.

“You do?” You say, instead of asking something else, with a sudden bad feeling in your gut.

“Yeah. But…”

You know what he says without him having to say it.

It feels like you’ve been punched.

The picture behind your eyelids burns brighter.

“That’s okay,” you say in response to his unsaid words, speaking too late, so that it's obvious that it’s  _ not  _ okay.

Your heart is  _ sinking,  _ as if it has any right to, as if  _ he’s _ in the wrong. How did you go from high to low so fast?

You  _ scared  _ him. You put too much pressure on him too fast- it’s exactly what Sam said, that he’s all levels of wary and weird, and little things can set him off, because of everything that he’s been through-

Even if he was someone else, though, even if he was _ normal,  _ he would still say no-  _ anyone  _ would say no to being given such a request out of _ nowhere.  _

Well,  _ Rina _ didn’t, but she doesn’t count in this situation, does she?

“Sorry,” he says.

That hurts worse.

“Don’t apologize,” you say quickly. “It’s not like it’s not going to work now- I mean, it’ll be fine. Are you still down to meet, though?”

“Sure,” he says, too late.

***

Bucky Barnes does not like anything in his coffee. 

He takes it _ black, _ black like his clothes, black like his soul, black like whatever other emo shit can come up with. 

It’s not that funny anymore.

Still, you keep up with it- you’re funny and talkative and charming and everything else, because you don’t know what else to do. The subject will be broached, it’s inevitable-  _ you’ll _ broach it, even, but you still have to figure out  _ how. _

He’s subdued. And wearing his stupid hat, again, and you would give anything to knock it off so you could really see him, and he’s cautiously cradling his mug in a way that makes you ache everywhere.

The cafe is busy and decorated with a specific aesthetic, one that you would call  _ manufactured bohemian. _ Potted plants and quirky photographs and drinks that all have fancy and ridiculous names. The baristas wear yellow aprons, and if you have a membership card, every tenth purchase gets you a free sugar cookie iced with a smiling sun.

Your cappuccino foam is dissolving. Sometimes, even though it’s mostly tasteless, you swipe it up and eat it with a spoon. Today, it seems like a bad idea- frivolous in the face of his silence and your unmotivated charisma and this stupid idea lingering between you two, like a friend that’s overstayed their welcome.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out, and wonder why you feel so jumpy for saying it. “For bringing that thing up yesterday.”

To your own credit, you still sound confident.

He looks at you so darkly that you wonder if you should be afraid. Have there ever been others in your seat, afraid?

You’re  _ not  _ afraid. 

“It’s fine,” he says, and continues staring at you like it’s  _ not  _ fine. 

“I’m just- I was just thinking out loud,” you say. You feel like you have to explain yourself, prove something to him, so that you won’t wilt. “It was just an idea that I thought could be cool. I told you because, no _ ,  _ wait. I mean, I know that I- _ fuck. _ I’m sorry that it made you uncomfortable. That was really dumb of me.”

He tilts his head, eyes sliding over, and you shiver.

He looks bored. 

Which is unnerving and terrifying as hell, because you have this carefully hand-crafted, precisely-cut image of who you are supposed to be, and it is not meant to be boring in the _ slightest,  _ but he's  _ bored, _ and you’re going to  _ lose  _ it.

“I said it’s fine,” he says, monotonous, giving the sudden impression that he’s about to leave. But he’s just sitting in his seat, unwrapping his hands from his mug and setting them on the table, while hands are on the verge of shaking. “It didn't make me uncomfortable.”

If that was true, then you wouldn’t be  _ having  _ this conversation in the first place. You wouldn’t be stumbling over yourself to say something so simple.

It takes considerable effort to keep your gaze steady. “Okay. But I still- I just want to say a thing really quick.”

“Say it.”

He’s being mean.

But this thing has been eating at you for a while now, so you don’t care.

“Um, so, we’re really different people,” you start, and before you second-guess it, you adopt your speaker voice, the teaching voice, the  _ smart  _ one. He has to know this about you- you’re  _ smart.  _ “And you obviously have all of your own things going on in your life that I can’t even imagine, and if you ever want to, like,  _ talk  _ about it, I’m here, but I also  _ don’t care.” _

He raises an eyebrow.

You push on.

“Like, it’s not  _ important  _ to me. If you want it to be _ ,  _ then it’ll be, but if not, then it’s whatever. I'm not- when I see you, I just see  _ you. _ Does that make sense? Like, I don’t really think of any of that other stuff? If I’m supposed to, though, I’m sorry. I… I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

You don’t get nervous often, but you let out a small, nervous laugh.

It’s like your heart and head and lungs are suspended, frozen in ice while he takes your words in. The door to the cafe chimes and a large group of people step in. Middle aged women, all wearing athletic clothes. Devil’s ivy grows on the wall farthest from you- how  _ chic-  _ with vines snaking forward in your direction, reaching for you in green and streaky white.

He smiles.

All you see is teeth and creased eyes and a low, uncreased brow- you want to  _ kiss  _ him.

“Tell me the idea again,” he says, and leans back in his seat. He crosses his arms, and you watch his forearms shift and strain against his shirt, and then you clear your throat and look away and try to _ focus. _

You inhale and gather everything, hoping that this time, you’ll be able to make it make sense.

***

One thing spirals into another. Your words were building and building, rising like a crescendo, overwhelming you to the point where you just said it outright, and-

He’s now in your apartment. 

He is  _ literally  _ in your  _ apartment.  _

You watch him survey the area- the clutter, the mismatched furniture, the crooked posters and photos and artwork hung up on the walls. The subpar paint on the walls that you didn’t choose, the cabinets made of old wood with newly replaced handles.

The entire place is  _ creaking,  _ becoming worse for the wear with each passing day. You could probably afford nicer, but it doesn’t matter, because you  _ love  _ it here- you’ve formed an emotional attachment that goes beyond sad paint and constant repairs. Your home is  _ cozy. _

But right now, with Bucky in here, it’s suddenly  _ cramped. _

“I want you to sit over here,” you say, and facing a  _ great  _ window, rounded on top with those gorgeous little decorative swirls, which is your favorite part of the whole place, is an armchair. It’s a steal you found at an antique store, with little tassels lining the back of the seat, upholstered with the  _ tackiest  _ floral print you’ve ever seen, but it’s  _ perfect  _ for what you’re trying to do.

The sun is shining strong and unfiltered- he’ll be lit up.

Bucky sits. He looks on edge, and beautiful.

You want to make this easy for him. But you might be too swept away in him to make any efforts- you’re still in shock that he agreed to this in the first place, so disoriented with him being  _ here,  _ in  _ your  _ place, that your trains of thought keep on derailing.

You’re closer than you wish you were, closer to  _ losing  _ it.

“Perfect. Give me one second.”

You go to your room, which isn’t really a room but a sectioned-off alcove with a bit of wall blocking it from view, no door- weird architecture, but whatever, to retrieve your supplies. Tape and the neatly folded swatches of fabric and your camera. 

Photography isn’t your thing, but you need reference material.

When you return, he’s looking pensive, and dazzling. His arms fall tensely on the sides of the chair, but his hands dangle so  _ gracefully,  _ and the light catches his face and colors it golden- you are going to  _ lose  _ it when it comes to painting his eyes. They’re blue, but you see them as suns.

“You look great,” you say, and he blushes. You’re ready to pounce, right now.

The fabric is a little bit awkward. It has to be draped upon him- Bucky bristles at your actions in a way that tells you he’s never done anything even remotely like this before, but you persist, and he lets you.

“Get out of the chair really quick.”

“Okay.”

Bucky gets out of the chair. You hop up on it, to tape the corners of the fabric to the ceiling. It’s a flimsy attempt, but they hold and flutter just fine.

He takes you by the hand to bring you back down.    
“Careful,” he says, as you make the daunting two-and-a-half-foot descent, and he squeezes your hand in his gloved one before you make him sit down again. 

You are  _ buzzing  _ with electricity. Another point to him- that was  _ smooth. _

The loose ends of the fabric are tricky, You try at first to tape them to the back of the chair, moving back behind him to reach. Bucky’s head stays perfectly still, and the chiffon looks wrong. It looks weirdly stiff.

So you drape one on him like planned, sort of dripping down his shoulder in a bunched-up purple river, and let the other hang freely, swaying a little from the fragility of the tape.

You move back around to face him.

“This is perfect,” you say, and grin, because this is  _ finally  _ happening.  _ “You _ look perfect.”

He’s staring all intensely again. You want to come close to him, tell him how lovely he looks, straight out of a dream.  _ You’re so pretty, _ you almost say, but you have some semblance of rational thought left in you- and so you stay quiet.

The camera dangles from its strap around your neck. You take it in your hands and power it on. The settings are adjusted, and you fiddle with the shutter speed and focus and everything else before bringing it close to your eye, expecting this dream-

He’s all tense, again. 

It’s the lens, you immediately think, even though that doesn’t really make sense. You look like- you look like  _ him  _ when he does  _ his  _ things. Lenses and targets and crosshairs. How is this thought so  _ immediate? _

You’re just trying to take a  _ picture.  _

“Relax,” you say, and it does absolutely nothing.

“I am relaxed,” he bites out. 

He’s really _ not. _ There’s something shifting in his face, something discontented, a brewing storm. His hands are starting to harshly curl into the armrests, digging at the upholstery, distorting the flowers.

The chiffon looms.

“Fix your hands. Like, move them- no, turn them back,” 

You’re stooping over to fully capture him, almost ready to take a knee.

His hands flex and stay as they are, stressed and taut and not  _ right,  _ and the rest of him is still so-

You bring the camera down.

***

He’s in this ugly chair, surrounded by fabric, and you’re pretty and wearing a pale pink sweater, and you’re aiming a camera at him, for a  _ picture,  _ but he feels like a  _ target. _

White-hot adrenaline and cold and dark dread pull at both sides of him. He feels like a total  _ mess.  _

Is this they all felt- how they all  _ feel,  _ when he is aiming at them? He tries to do things differently, now, but the tragedy still takes place, the trigger is still fired- the deed is still done.  _ Karma, _ he thinks, retracing its path, coming back to bite him through you.

You’re frowning. He wants to apologize.

You take the camera down and let it dangle from the strap at your neck. He just had your hands in his- he wants them back and wants to get as far away from you as possible.

“This isn’t working,” you say, and straighten back up, placing your hands on your hips. You look powerful, and he might be trembling from clenching his jaw so hard. “You are  _ not  _ relaxed.”

“I’m not,” he agrees, and you sigh and fix him with a look that isn’t pity- he’d  _ bolt  _ if it were pity, but steely resolve.

You take the camera off your neck, and gently bend over to set it on the floor. Then you sit down beside it, wincing as your knee makes a noise, and giving him a bemused little smile that he wants to just-

Your head level with his knees as you sit, cross-legged. Hands splayed over your lower thighs, careless and carefree. Your posture slouches a bit, relaxing the way he is not, and it's relieving.

His hands grip the chair like a lifeline.

“Why isn’t this working?” You ask, more yourself than him. “You were so- nevermind. Or, Let’s… um, wait. Maybe- Can I?”

He’s always thought of you as so put-together, a  _ born  _ speaker, but now you’ve been stammering and stuttering all over his heart, and he doesn’t know what to _ do. _

You reach out with your hand, hesitantly, wavering. The scar smiles pink.

He nods- his head nods, his body is moving outside of itself, and he feels sheltered and exposed, nearly covered in purple fabric and vulnerable and sitting  _ above  _ you, all of him bared for you to see. Hot and cold.

Your hand goes on his knee.

He’s so alarmed that he almost lashes out- he wants to  _ think,  _ but you’re giving him no  _ time  _ to-

Your other hand is reaching out, tugging at his own, and you bring yourself up to your knees and lean back on the balls of your feet, balancing. Your head is still below his chest and tilted so he can’t see your eyes, and you’re holding his hand like it’ll  _ break. _

There’s a dry-erase board fastened on the opposite wall, next to all of the other eclectic clutter. It’s filled in with a to-do list- the words  _ COOK SOMETHING _ are scrawled at the top in angry red marker. He focuses on the words as you play with his fingers.

You gently trace a thumb over the ridges of his knuckles; he’s suddenly so  _ ticklish  _ that he flinches and chokes on a word that he doesn’t know how to say.

You nudge his hand over to the side, drape the fingers down, and your other hand is still burning his knee, setting him  _ alight- _

You’re  _ molding  _ him. Setting him to look how you want, manhandling him in the softest way possible. Should this feel violating? Rude? It feels good-  _ purposeful.  _ He’s letting you do this, and his heart is beating hard, but he can still hear your breathing and his breathing and the white noise of the traffic on the street below, stories away.

You take your hand off his knee, and nudge at his left hand, and he thinks now, how fucking  _ stupid  _ this is- if it’s  _ his  _ fucking hand, why does he wear this stupid fucking _ glove?  _

He goes to work it off and you understand, and if he wasn’t wanting so badly to be still for you, stay here as you take your picture, he would grab you by the necklace you’re wearing and drag you closer. 

The glove is pulled off and dropped to the floor and the silver of his hand winks in the sunlight.

“Oh,” you say softly, and there’s a crack in your voice, and his voice would crack too, if you asked him to speak.

There’s this look on your face. He doesn’t know if you want to hold his hand or kiss it or put his fingers in your mouth, it looks like all three and he is all unfurled, too, because he is sitting back in this ugly armchair and you’re holding his hands again, and you’re backlit by the sun- like a vision sent straight from the sky.

You fix his hands.

This feels  _ intimate-  _ more intimate than kissing, or anything else. This feels like skipping steps.

After a moment, you pry your hands off of his, and lean back.

Wordlessly, you take the camera and stand up, and you fiddle it and back up, back to where you were at first,  _ far  _ away. Then you’re bringing it close to your eye, looking at him through a lens, and the shutter clicks once, twice.

You bring it back down.

“You got it?” He says, and his voice sounds rough- he sounds  _ parched. _

You look at its little screen and bite your lip. “Yeah.”

“Can you come here for a second?”

You look up at him and he’s glad that he couldn’t see your eyes before- they’re _ dark. _ “Yeah.”

The camera is tossed to the side, again, and you walk like you’re floating. The steps have been skipped, but Bucky will have to go back to them anyway- he doesn’t like to leave any stones unturned-

And so he waits until you’re close enough, and then tugs you down by your sweater- he doesn’t want to hurt you, and he’s reaching and reaching-

You laugh or smile or do something else sweet, but he’s too caught up to tell. He pulls you down to him, and surrounded by you and sunlight and fluttering purple chiffon, he kisses you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my fucking god. thank you i heart you i love you i will passionately french kiss you for 45 minutes if you managed to get this far. thank you so so so much for reading!!!! it means the world to me <3 honestly this might have been extremely poorly written but whatever. i kept the painting idea purposely vague because ... idk i just thought it would be fun lol. next chapter we get more k*ssing ... a fancy party hosted by tony (this is a self insert marvel fanfic you KNOW that there is going to be a fancy party hosted by tony) ... umm and a cool moment that i haven't thought of yet. that's it.  
> pleaseplease comment and kudos and bookmark and all that jazz!! it do be making me feel validated .... and this chapter took so mf long... reading a nice comment or two would really make bitches smile ... i'm bitches :) thank you!!


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